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Drought and Fires |
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Drought and Fires: Gansu Province, China, 2007
In the summer of 2006, China experienced its worst drought in 50 years, depriving at least 18 million people of access to drinking water, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua. One year later, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered a dismal forecast for such drought-stricken places in Asia: "More frequent and prolonged droughts as a consequence of climate change and other anthropogenic factors together will result in the increasing trends of desertification."
This abandoned farmhouse stands in a transitional area at the junction of the fertile HeXi Corridor and the Badajarin Desert. Here, arable land is being overtaken by the desert, forcing farmers to abandon their land and reminding neighbors of the encroaching desert that threatens to destroy their own farms. In the last 50 years, an average of 8 million hectares of farmland suffered a production loss greater than 30 percent due to drought and other factors.
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