Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

Residents wade through flood waters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Beaumont Place, Houston, Texas on August 28, 2017. Houston was still largely paralyzed Monday, and there was no relief in sight from the storm that spun into Texas as a Category 4 hurricane, then parked itself over the Gulf Coast. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)

A camel foams at the mouth as he is whipped by a robot jockey during a race at Nad al-Sheba on December 6, 2006 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This is the first season that robotic jockeys have been used to race camels in Dubai. Controversially children from India were used to ride the camels in past seasons. These robot jockeys costing 15000GBP and up, were designed in Geneva and include shock absorbers and GPS tracking systems. The camel's owners control them from their speeding four wheel drives at the side of the track. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

A young boy scoops water from a hand-dug well in the dry riverbed near Matinyani, in the semi-arid Kitui County in southeastern Kenya, 22 March 2015, the World Water Day. Residents of Kitui County and other arid and semi-arid areas of the country have been hard-hit by extremely poor rainfall this year while the government said in previous month that some 1.6 million people countrywide are facing acute starvation due to the drought and will need relief food over the next six months. Residents of Matinyani say they haven't seen a drop of rain in nearly four months. Thousands of Kenyans in rural areas walk tens of kilometers just to fetch water to drink and to be used in their homes. According to an estimate by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), 17 million people lack access to safe water in Kenya, where the drought is a perennial problem. (Photo by Dai Kurokawa/EPA)

To mark World Water Day, on March 22nd Solidarités International and its agency BDDP Unlimited will roll out a campaign to build awareness of the scourge of undrinkable water.

In this April 13, 2015 file photo, a Thai woman splashes water on people from the back of a truck during the Songkran water festival to celebrate Thai New Year in Bangkok, Thailand.Thailand's military government is putting a dampener on the annual nationwide water fight. Despite Thailand's worst drought in 20 years, the junta says it has no intention of limiting the virtually around-the-clock water throwing that defines the three-day Songkran festival. Instead, it has decided to impose morality measures. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)

Foreign tourists join the annual Songkran Festival celebration, the Thai traditional New Year, also known as the water festival in Silom district of Bangkok, Thailand, 13 April 2014. The three-day Songkran Festival runs from 13 to 15 April and is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each others faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Narong Sangnak/EPA)