BEIRUT, June 5: Seeking to ease a water crisis threatening a third of humanity, the United Nations marked world environment day on Thursday with calls for governments to double aid to poor countries and for ordinary people to fix leaky taps.

Under the slogan “Water — two billion people are dying for it!”, projects ranged from draining mosquito-infested pools in Kenya to a tasting in Brussels of tap water from around Europe.

“Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message on the anniversary of a landmark environmental conference in Stockholm on June 5, 1972.

“One person in six lives without regular access to safe drinking water. Over twice that number — 2.4 billion — lack access to adequate sanitation,” he said.

Bangladesh launched a tree-planting drive meant to turn the nation into a “garden of green” by 2015. In Egypt, politicians and celebrities helped sweep the streets and planted 600 trees in one of Cairo’s oldest and poorest neighbourhoods.

The United Nations says the world must do far more to meet goals of halving the proportion of people who lack safe drinking water and sanitation by the year 2015, part of an overall drive to halve global poverty.

“If we are to meet the commitments...the world will have to spend up to 180 billion dollars annually, more than double what is being spent today,” said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.

He told a news conference in Beirut, hosting the annual event, that big investments were needed in everything from sewage treatment to irrigation.

And the United Nations says ordinary citizens can do their bit with simple measures like plugging leaks at home, collecting rainwater, turning off the tap when brushing their teeth or taking a short shower instead of a bath.

In China, the world’s most populous country, the government said it planned to invest more than 30 billion dollars over the next few years to fight water pollution and help relieve shortages.

But environmentalists reiterated concern over China’s Three Gorges Dam — the world’s largest hydroelectric project — which China began filling on Sunday.—Reuters