There is no life without water. On the other hand, it can also be a curse – when there is too much or when it is poisoned. Human communities need appropriate infrastructure to cope with the challenges, and progress is being made in many places. A decade ago, sanitation was not a topic policymakers liked to discuss. Many of them are not shying away from it anymore. As climate change will compound problems of both scarcity and over-abundance, adaptation to increasingly volatile precipitation is an urgent matter.