This paper highlights the International Water Management Institute’s view on water for rural development focusing mainly developing countries. It looks into the key areas for interventions in water resource management for rural development and discusses the issues in water management for agriculture. The paper analyses the different situations and the different needs that each situation requires. In light of the information that this paper provides, the recommendations focus on the problems that arise when developing a strategy on rural development. The paper also .provides analyses of the current and future water resources in the World Bank’s defined regions. In this section the paper looks at the global water resources, the trends in development, the issues in water supply and demand from 1995 to 2025, and on water for rural development. This section also provides a summary of the paper and the issues discussed in it. With the aid of graphs and statistics, this is a comprehensive paper on water for rural development.