 Our lives depend on water. We need it to sustain ourselves, for culture and agriculture, recreation and transport, even for defence. But water is also a threat. Floods, tsunamis and rainstorms can kill people and destroy their livelihoods. Water is always connected, rivers flow to the sea, lakes evaporate, clouds produce rain or snow. Their flows connect to human-made systems for drinking water, irrigation and sewage. People around the world have responded to the complex challenging of water for life on Earth. They have put systems in place to collect, contain and move water around in ways that are often embedded in social and cultural systems. We make sense of our surroundings by giving our cities the names of rivers or mermaids or a name that emphasises the location near the sea. Our awareness of the importance of water for human life has decreased over time. In recent centuries, we've used ever more powerful tools to either exploit or resist water. But as we have built to avoid floods, we have lost the opportunity to live with water. For example, by capturing sediments that enrich the soil. Historic local water management systems can inspire us to find ways of meeting contemporary challenges related to climate change, industrial pollution, overuse of water for agriculture, farming or mining. Understanding how people through the ages have valued water helps us realise that to live with water you have to respect it and use it wisely. Co-creation by experts in the field of water management and heritage as well as engagement of diverse communities can lead to stronger designs and more sustainable solutions. To live with water is to ask time and again on many different levels how water works.