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)

Extraordinary tales of everyday heroism have been illustrated beautifully by renowned US photographer Steve McCurry in the new 2015 Lavazza Calendar. The calendar which has been created in collaboration with the Slow Food movement, features twelve breathtaking pictures, capturing the spirit, strength and humanity of the Earth Defenders – women and men who protect their land and projects in Africa with passion and bravery. The proceeds from sales of the calendar and all donations will be contributed entirely to create 10,000 food gardens in African schools and villages by the end of 2016. (Photo by Steve McCurry/2015 Lavazza Calendar)

Crew in Britain's first ever full-size reconstructed sea-going Bronze Age boat, paddle out to sea near to the National Maritime Museum as it makes its maiden voyage on March 6, 2013 in Falmouth, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy)

'Military woman' is a constantly updated gallery of images of women wearing uniform: military, police and so on. We truly hope that our beloved visitors won't remain passive and will take part in this project making it even more interesting! Note that all the images featured in the gallery are taken from publically available sources: their copyright belongs to their respective creators and the trade mark to the owners. ...

“One Third” – a project on food waste by an Austrian photography Klaus Pichler. According to a UN study one third of the world's food goes to waste – the largest part thereof in the industrialized nations of the global north. Equally, 925 million people around the world are threatened by starvation. The series “One Third” describes the connection between individual wastage of food and globalized food production.

Photo: Pineapple. Place of production: Guayaquil, Ecuador. Cultivation method: Outdoor plantation • Time of harvest: All- season. Transporting distance: 10.666 km (linear distance) • Means of transportation: Aircraft, truck. Carbon footprint (total) per kg: 11,94 kg • Water requirement (total) per kg: 360 l. Price: 2,10 € / kg. (Photo by Klaus Picher)

“The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is a rare tiger subspecies that inhabits the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It was classified as critically endangered by IUCN in 2008 as the population is projected to be 441 to 679 individuals, with no subpopulation having an effective population size larger than 50 individuals, with a declining trend”. – Wikipedia

This photo taken on July 25, 2012 one of 14 preserved bodies of critically-endangered Sumatran tigers seized as members of the Indonesian national police and the special crime unit inspect the scene at a warehouse in Cibubur, south of Jakarta. Indonesian police seized 14 preserved bodies of critically-endangered Sumatran tigers in a raid on a house near Jakarta, a spokesman said on July 19. (Photo by Bay Ismoyo/AFP Photo)

Two De Brazza's monkeys stand together at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park on June 21, 2011 in Hythe, England. Port Lympne has welcomed a host of new arrivals this year with wildebeest, colobus monkeys, gorillas and rhinos all adding to the current stock. Port Lympne and Howletts Wild Animal parks were set up by the late John Aspinall to protect and breed rare and endangered species and, where possible, return them to safe areas in the wild. The Aspinall Foundation which runs the parks also manages two gorilla rescue and rehabilitation projects in the central African countries of Gabon and Congo where they have successfully reintroduced over 50 gorillas to the wild. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

“The Reversible Destiny Lofts – Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller) is a nine-unit multiple dwelling. It was first completed example of procedural architecture put to residential use. These lofts reflexively articulate the residents’ operative tendencies and coordinating skills essential to and determinative of human thought and behavior; which means to say, the lofts manage, by virtue of how they are constructed, to reveal to their residents the ins and outs of what makes a person, in this case the resident. This is the same set of tendencies and skills to which Arakawa and Madeline Gins gave diagrammatic form in their decades-long research project The Mechanism of Meaning”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The exterior of the concept design home “Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA: In Memory of Helen Keller” is seen on October 27, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)