IN recent weeks, Washington has pledged billions of dollars to tackle some of Pakistan's greatest domestic challenges. Last month, Congress approved the much-maligned Kerry-Lugar bill (KLB), which authorises $1.5bn in annual developmental assistance for five years.

Several weeks later, during a visit to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a $125m contribution to a new plan meant to shore up Pakistan's sputtering energy sector.

Unfortunately, such aid easily gets ensnared in, and eclipsed by, the volatile politics of the bilateral relationship. What do more Pakistanis remember — the KLB's commitment to sustainable development projects, or the heated debate about the bill's perceived conditionalities? Clinton's unveiling of the energy plan, or the comments she made on the same visit about Pakistan's 'failure' to eliminate the threat of Al Qaeda within its borders?

American assistance to Pakistan is important and should be encouraged. However, these aid programmes should be supplemented by more robust cooperative efforts between Pakistanis and Americans that do not involve aid provision. Such person-to-person exchanges are less likely to be tainted by politics, and the problematic questions that invariably arise about US aid programmes in Pakistan — will the funding get to those who need it the most? Is the aid contribution sufficient enough to have an effect? — need never be asked.

Water is an ideal starting point for such cooperation, because the two countries face such similar problems. While Pakistan's water crisis has been well-chronicled in these pages, America's warrants some elaboration. US water supplies, like Pakistan's, are running dry. The American West is particularly parched. Yet on the East Coast, rivers in South Carolina and Massachusetts and lakes in Florida and Georgia — including Lake Lanier, Atlanta's chief water source — are also drying up. And in the nation's Midwest, the mighty Lake Superior — the largest of the Great Lakes — has become a shallow shadow of its former self.

America is also awash in polluted water. In many areas, water sources are choked with contaminants and raw sewage. While one may gag at the thought of the 400 million gallons of sewage that reportedly flow through Karachi and into the sea every day, consider that 27 billion gallons of wastewater ooze into New York City's waterways in a typical year. Unsurprisingly, nearly 20 million Americans get sick each year from drinking contaminated water.

Regional water disputes pose another problem. Think Pakistan is afflicted by conflicts over interprovincial water-sharing? In the United States, more than 30 states are quarrelling with their neighbours over water.

Experts offer various explanations for the US water crisis, including population growth and the absence of water metering or taxation systems that would give people a stronger incentive to conserve. Sound familiar? Opportunities abound for Pakistan and the United States to cooperate in addressing their water challenges. For example

— Both countries have developed innovative conservation methods that are ripe to be shared. The arid city of Tucson, Arizona imposes a surcharge on excessive water use during summer months. And Pakistan has become a pioneer in harvesting stormwater and rainwater.

— Researchers in Idaho have developed a novel tool that provides specific and inexpensive measurements of water consumed across large areas or individual fields. This tool, known as METRIC, has already helped resolve a fight between Colorado and Kansas over water in the Arkansas River. Perhaps its technology could also help alleviate Punjab-Sindh water-sharing tensions.

— Pakistan's vaunted community-based sanitation model, the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), is a natural fit for sanitation-deprived areas of urban America. US cities are brimming with community organisers who promote the type of local empowerment strategies — such as community participation and decentralised decision-making — that make the OPP successful.

Initiatives are already underway. A water-conserving architectural design class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses university buildings in Pakistani cities as case studies. Meanwhile, the US State Department and US consulate in Karachi recently brought Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, an American director and academic, to that city to serve as an American cultural envoy. Her core project — putting together a theatre production, 'Water Calligraphy', in partnership with Faisal Malik of Thespianz Theatre — focuses on the role of the arts in addressing the precarious state of water in Karachi and New York.

Water cooperation can help reduce some of the obstacles to better Pakistan-US relations. One such obstacle is the tactical nature of the bilateral relationship. Many observers describe Washington's relations with Islamabad as transactional — ties largely dominated by US efforts to extract concessions that help fulfil short-term security interests.

Another obstacle is what many Pakistanis perceive as US heavy-handedness, as evidenced by American demands that Pakistan do more about extremism. Even seemingly benign policies — such as efforts to bring energy relief to Pakistanis — are accompanied by remarks from US officials that can come across as hectoring (recall Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Jacob Lew's insistence that Pakistan must take “hard steps” to reform its electric utility sector).

With water exchanges, this all becomes moot. Instead of one country exploiting the relationship to serve its own narrow interests, both nations cooperate to find common solutions to shared problems. Additionally, because the United States is hampered by its own water crisis, it lacks the credibility to lecture Pakistan about contaminated rivers or wasteful consumption patterns. With both countries operating on a level playing field, the United States is in no position to claim the higher ground.

To be sure, a series of Pakistani-American exchanges about water will not magically replenish reservoirs or rivers. Plus, visa delays and security problems could undermine efforts to bring people together. Still, such cooperative projects serve a valuable purpose. They focus attention on an urgent issue that affects millions in both countries, in a way that places Pakistanis and Americans on an equal footing, and in an environment free of uncomfortable talk about conditionalities and deliverables.

In other words, they make Pakistan-US relations a bit less transactional and a little more equitable. And that's an outcome $125m or $1.5bn cannot easily buy.

The writer is programme associate with the Asia Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC.

michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org