It's used for drinking and cooking, washing and cleaning. And massive quantities are used in agriculture and industry.
But as ubiquitous as water is, hundreds of millions of people around the world still don't have access to this precious resource.
As the international community marks World Water Day this week, our U.N. correspondent looks at how using water wisely is everyone's business.
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"Water Water everywhere/ nor any drop to drink," as the saying goes. But for nearly 1 in 10 people around the world who lack access to clean water, this phrase is a daunting reality.
Which is why providing access to safe drinking water must be a priority, says Dr. Rita Colwell, environmental microbiogist and the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.
SOT: "So much is wrapped around the fact that by having safe water and being healthy, you address many of society's problems. You provide good health, which means the family is strong. It means they can work. It means you provide social stability, you provide economic security, and you also provide national security as well."
According to the United Nations' water agency, nearly 663 million people lacked access to clean drinking water last year.
Nearly two-and-a-half billion people do not have access to a toilet… And some one thousand children under the age of five die every day from water and sanitation-related diseases.
Cindy Kushner is the Senior Advisor on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF, and works closely with sister agency UN Water, to improve both access to water and its quality
SOT: "In the past, we were looking at just whether people had access to water or if they were going to the river to drink it, but now we're looking at really making sure we measure the quality of the water so that people not only have to have that water closer to home so they're not spending hours to walk for it, but it also is a good quality, it's not going to make them sick. "
But the problem goes beyond water access... it's also about how the resource is managed, say Indian political activist Sunita Narain and British geographer John Anthony Allan, both Stockholm Water Prize Laureates.
SOT: "That extremely ridiculous notion of taking a little bit of human excreta, taking a lot of water, and using water as a carrier for sewage, is a totally in mind an environmentally foolish idea that has come from the rich North. Countries like us will have to reinvent that entire cycle."
SOT: "I'm aware that water quality and enough water to drink and keep clean with is a key issue but that's not a volume problem. It's a management problem. If you have enough to invest and enough engineers, we can solve that problem."
Despite a heavy industry reliance on water use, there is increasing buy-in among industries, with more investment in water-saving technologies, says UNICEF's Cindy Kushner.
SOT: "Businesses do understand that if they are reliant on water — and there are a lot of industries that are heavily reliant on water — that they must be invested and ensure that that water is secure and available to them in the future. So they have a great interest to reduce their water footprint, to reduce the amount of water that they use."
It's about lives and livelihoods, and the World Water Day theme this year highlights the crucial relationship between water and jobs.
SOT: What is not so often said is that the availability and sustainable management of water has a clear and direct link with the creation of quality jobs.
Guy Rider is the Director-General of the International Labor Organization and chair of UN Water.
SOT: "Today almost half the world's workers — 1.5 billion — work in water-related sectors and nearly all jobs depend on water and those that ensure its safe delivery./ The fact is that water is work. It requires water for its safe delivery, but at the same time it can create and improve conditions of work."
And the UN says that makes water everyone's business. Liling Tan, SIGOUT, New York.