SANTIAGO, Mar 13 (IPS) - Three indigenous communities from the Chilean highlands have just received solar panels, which will be set up and maintained by unlikely solar engineers: five native women who travelled halfway around the world to India and overcame language and other barriers to bring photovoltaic energy to their villages.

MALAGA, Spain, Mar 13 (IPS) - "They wanted to hire me, and that was something that hadn't ever happened to me before," says Marta Seror, a 25-year-old college graduate from Spain who is now working in an outsourcing company in Poland.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 (IPS) - What has education, science and culture to do with one of the world's most scarce and finite resources?

Plenty, says the United Nations, which has designated the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as the lead agency to promote the 2013 International Year of Water Cooperation (IYWC).

Asked if water is more an area for potential conflicts or an area for mutual cooperation, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova told IPS, "Water acts as a unifier."

She said the historical record shows that water disputes do get resolved, even among bitter enemies, and even as conflicts drag out over other issues.

"Some of the most vociferous enemies around the world have negotiated water agreements or are in the process of doing so," said Bokova, a former foreign minister of Bulgaria, who studied at the University of Maryland and at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In an interview with IPS, she said "it is often said that water can be a source of conflict.

"But at UNESCO, we are guided by the opposite idea - we want to see water as a tremendous resource for cooperation, for exchange and joint work between States and societies," said Bokova, the first woman to head UNESCO, and who is expected to run for a second four-year term, come October.

According to the United Nations, the IYWC will highlight "the history of successful water cooperation initiatives, as well as identify burning issues on water education, water diplomacy, trans-boundary water management, financing cooperation, national/international legal frameworks, and the linkages with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)."

Bokova said, "We need a new vision that marries social equity, environmental protection and sustainable economic development as part of a single agenda for a more sustainable world."

She said UNESCO strongly believes that water must lie at the heart of this vision, and water diplomacy is an essential tool of 'soft power' for a more peaceful world.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What are the specific areas of cooperation between, and among, countries now?

A: The Mekong Committee has functioned since 1957, exchanging data throughout the Vietnam War. Secret "picnic table" talks have been held between Israel and Jordan since the unsuccessful Johnston negotiations of 1953 to 1955, even as these riparians until only recently were in a legal state of war.

The Indus River Commission survived through two wars between India and Pakistan. And all ten Nile riparians are currently involved in negotiations over cooperative development of the basin.

There are numerous examples where trans-boundary waters have proved to be a source of cooperation rather than conflict. Nearly 450 agreements on international waters were signed between 1820 and 2007. And over 90 international water agreements were drawn up to help manage shared water basins on the African continent.

Q: Are the U.N.'s efforts at "water cooperation" feasible against the backdrop of water-sharing conflicts between India-Pakistan? Israel-Jordan? Palestine-Israel?

A: The role of the United Nations is to offer a platform for dialogue and communication through the tools that are available to the system. Each agency facilitates cooperation from a specific angle of intervention.

UNESCO, for example, uses education and science as a means to intervene in a situation where cooperation needs to be established or enhanced. Two unique programmes provide the organisation's member states with the scientific backbone needed for any water management issue at any level - from the local to the national, regional and international levels.

Firstly, the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) is the only intergovernmental scientific cooperative programme that aims at helping member states manage their water resources and address the needs of their peoples through science and education.

And, secondly, he World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) which provides invaluable data and regular assessments of the planet's water resources, without which decision makers cannot move forward with their decisions making processes.

Q: Any concrete examples?

A: Example 1: UNESCO's Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential (PCCP) programme, which is an associated programme of both IHP and WWAP, facilitates multi-level and interdisciplinary dialogue to foster peace, cooperation and development by building capacity to manage trans-boundary water resources.

For example, research on Lake Titicaca involved stakeholders from both Bolivia and Peru. A joint document was prepared outlining the status of conflict and cooperation in this trans-boundary water body.

In 1992, Bolivia and Peru created the Bi-national Autonomous Authority of Lake Titicaca recognising the importance of the joint management of the lake.

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 13 (IPS) - In search of a more transparent and agile justice system that is less authoritarian and bureaucratic, judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and legal experts in Argentina are pressing for reforms to modernise the judicial branch and make it more democratic.

GENEVA, Mar 13 (IPS) - Drought has dramatically increased as a consequence of climate change. Most countries react to it only after it has occurred, but don't have national policies to prevent it. The high-level meeting on national drought policies in Geneva this week is trying to match scientific knowledge with political awareness.

ROME, Mar 13 (IPS) - When Claudio was detained in a prison in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza, he had to share a 7.6 square-metre cell with two other people. "Once you excluded the space taken up by beds and drawers, each inmate was left with 90 centimetres to himself. We had to take it in turns to stand up," he told IPS.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 13 (IPS) - As the Malian army and its foreign partners are slowly securing northern cities in the West African nation, it is still unclear how the country will turn its back on the political crisis that led to the March 2012 military coup.

WASHINGTON, Mar 13 (IPS) - Cyber threats appear to have largely replaced terrorism as posing the greatest risks to U.S. national security, which also confronts major longer-term challenges from the effects of natural resource shortages and climate change, according to the latest in a series of annual threat assessments by the U.S. intelligence community.

WASHINGTON, Mar 12 (IPS) - As the new board of the United Nations Green Climate Fund meets in Berlin this week, activist and watchdog groups here and around the world are expressing frustration over proposed rules they say are already significantly limiting civil society participation in the new initiative.

PARACAMBÍ, Brazil, Mar 12 (IPS) - Separating Maria Gomes Morais' farm and a school in Rio de Janeiro are fields, hills and dirt roads that are impassable when it rains. But a school meal programme has forged a path linking the fresh produce harvested by small farmers like her with the need to provide nourishment to 45 million schoolchildren around Brazil.