Earth Report asked Dutch filmaker, Joost de Haas, to visit the wettest and driest places on earth to see how people cope with water - or the lack of it.

This is his film.

Water water everywhere...

Cherapunjee, a former British settlement in northeastern India, is the wettest place on earth. Its annual rainfall is 11.5 metres - fifteen times that of western Europe.

Life isn't easy for the inhabitants of Cherapunjee. When the rains fall - sometimes for two months without stopping - the villagers cannot grow crops. Plants rot in the ground and precious top soil is washed away. But the present inhabitants of Cherapunjee, the Khasi tribe, have learnt how to create new soil from manure and food leftovers which they spread over the land after the rains have stopped.

Ironically, water isn't their main problem. Even the wettest spot on earth is plagued by drought.

Most of Cherapunjee's rain falls during the monsoon season which lasts for four months. The rest of the year is dry as a bone and villagers are forced to collect water from a pipeline - their only supply of fresh water.

But this wasn't always the case. Once Cherapunjee had a bountiful natural supply of water all through the year - because Cherapunjee was once surrounded by forest.

During the monsoon, forests soak up rain water and release it again little by little in the dry season. But when forests disappear there is no vegetation to trap water and valuable topsoil is washed away. This is why, for eight months of the year, the wettest place in the world becomes little more than a desert.

There may be little hope of restoring Cherapunjee's forests but just two hundred miles away, in the Garo Hills, there is still lots of forest. Almost everywhere there is water to drink because the forest retains the plentiful rainfall. But for how long?

The next Cherapunjee?

In the Garo Hills people engage in 'slash and burn' agriculture where a new section of forest is burnt down every year to make room for crops. Ash from the fire makes an excellent fertiliser.

After one or two years this fertilizer is exhausted and the farmers are forced to move on to a new section of forest.

Slash and burn agriculture is often destructive but it can be sustainable - if the forest is allowed to recover fully. But in the Garo Hills, population pressure has resulted in over exploitation and the forests are dwindling. In a few years the Garo Hills may become as barren and dry as those surrounding Cheranjee.

If the wettest place on earth is a victim of drought, is there hope for the rest of the world?

Everywhere the amount of available clean drinking water is rapidly decreasing. Yet it's still possible to find new sources of water. Even in the least likely of places. Next, Joost de Haas travelled to Chile to the driest place on earth - the Atacama desert.

Water from the clouds

The vast Atacama desert begins in Peru and stretches almost halfway down into Chile. Here, there are spots where no rain has ever been recorded.

But even in the dryest desert there's water, it's just harvesting it that's been the problem.

The Atacama desert is dry because practically no rain reaches the area. Wind that blows in from the east loses all its moisture as it travels over the Andes. There are clouds over the desert but these clouds are too low and undeveloped to ever produce rain naturally.

Now, Professor Pilar Cereceda and her team of geographers have found a way to unlock the water in the clouds.

Using a system of nets and pipes, Cereceda 'catches' water in the clouds as they passed through the nets. The system is simple; tiny water droplets condense onto gauze and merge to become bigger drops which run into drainage pipes that run along the bottom of the nets. Using this technique, up to 50% of the water in the fog can be harvested.

And over the border in Peru another project using trees to trap water is hoping to eventually bring back the sound of running water to the desert.

Drought - a natural disaster?

Drought is never just a meteorological problem. Lack of water is often the result of mismanaged natural resources. In Cherapunjee, drought is not a climate problem but a poverty related problem. And it's a vicious circle seen the world over.

Over population results in destructive farming practices which strip away protective water-trapping forests, leaving manmade deserts in their wake. And as life gets harder, people are forced to use ever more destructive practices just to survive.

But the answer is simple: careful natural resource management.

Even in the driest spot on earth you can find water. And by using well managed techniques of water capture, deserts could once again flow with water.