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)

A woman wearing a protective mask walks outside a church in Mandaluyong, east of Manila, Philippines on Sunday, February 2, 2020. The Philippines on Sunday reported the first death of a new virus outside of China, where authorities delayed the opening of schools in the worst-hit province and tightened quarantine measures in another that allow only one family member to venture out to buy supplies. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

Ukrainian platoon commander Mariia talks on the phone in a position in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, July 2, 2022. Ukrainian soldiers returning from the frontlines in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region describe life during what has turned into a grueling war of attrition as apocalyptic. Mariia, 41, said that front-line conditions may vary depending on where a unit is positioned and how well supplied they are. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Female sea lion “Sarasa” holds a hose with her mouse to help a trainer clean her room at the Shinagawa Aqua Stadium aquarium in Tokyo on December 30, 2014. The aquarium is carrying out year-end general cleaning of their facilities. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

People look at sharks from an underwater room structure installed in the Aquarium of Paris, France, March 14, 2016. Airbnb and the Aquarium of Paris offer contest winners a night underwater sleeping with sharks and create a research platform for “misunderstood” shark species. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)

Eleven-year-old Kelen loves to dance in the half-built rooms of the centre in Kabanga Refuge Centre, Tanzania, 2012. The rescue centres protect albino people from the vicious hunters who sell their body parts to witch doctors. Photojournalist Ana Palacios, 43, visited the centre in Tanzania three times between 2012 and 2016 to find out more about the plight of albino people. (Photo by Ana Palacios/Barcroft Images)

Kritchaya “Lolita” Boonhor (R) curls her eyelashes in ladyboy Candy's (L) room while she chats her about her boyfriend, in Bangkok, Thailand, 27 November 2017. Most things in life are a question of negotiation. Lolita is a woman, that was not to be negotiated. What needed to be negotiated was how she was perceived by those around her. And that negotiation was one that took time and effort. (Photo by Lola Levan/EPA/EFE)

Reality TV personality Kim Kardashian speaks alongside US President Donald Trump during a second chance hiring and criminal justice reform event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, June 13, 2019. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP Photo)