"What threatens us most," he said, isn't scarcity, but the pollution and "poisoning" of water sources.

How people treat water resources is linked to "an industrial structure" built on an attitude of theft against nature, he said.

Instead of collaborating with God's plan of safeguarding and development, he said, "we are simply stealing and robbing, destroying all of this."

The problem also includes "who holds the keys" to the systems of distribution and the policies supporting exploitative structures, he said.

Rajendra Singh, a water conservationist from India who won the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015, said modern engineering and technology focus too heavily on "the maximum extraction of a resource."

"Everything is managed," he said; there is "no love or affection" or appreciation and respect for the natural resources at hand.

In fact, he said, resource management is just taking a resource from one place and placing it somewhere else, with little regard for the consequences that has on nature, he said.

Society, too, tends to focus on what people should gain in life -- like rights and resources -- and hardly ever asks that people give something back, he said.

The work he does helping local communities in India, he said, is about teaching people to "cooperate with crisis" and "cooperate with water" so that they practice a disciplined use of resources.

The proper mentality, he said, is "if you conserve, you have a right to water," not, having that right just because the resource is there.

Water, he said, is not just a human right, it's also a right for "the tiger, the elephant, the tree" and the river itself, which should not be drained dry.

There should be equal rights and respect toward nature, he said, because a greedy attitude toward the planet will not lead to "a bright future."