Pieter van Oel is Associate professor at the Water Resources Management group of Wageningen University. Pieter’s research and teaching activities focus on understanding sociohydrological systems for informing actors in managing water and drought. Most of Pieter’s work focuses on dealing with water crises in South America and Africa. Pieter likes to emphasize that water crises involve much more than water alone. They are societal problems with people suffering, but also making things worse. This means that solutions are in our own hands as well. Therefore scientists, engineers, and others need to join forces. Together we can learn from studying people’s complex relationship with water and drought worldwide.