PHOTOGRAPHS of expanding deserts in China from:
Lu Tongjing, DESERT WITNESS: Images of Environmental Degradation in China's Northwest (Heinrich Boll Foundation & the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Center: Galastar Entertainment Co., Beijing: 2003).

Related Eco-Economy Updates:
China's Shrinking Grain Harvest: How Its Growing Grain Imports Will Affect World Food Prices (10 March 2004)
Deserts Advancing, Civilization Retreating (27 March 2003)

After the dust storms have settled, electricity poles are often buried in sand dunes. In order to keep communications working, soldiers have to add another pole on top of the buried one. After a few days, when yet another sandstorm has blown away the sand dune, this kind of manually extended pole will be left behind.

Receding grasslands leave goats with nothing to eat but each other's hair. Nomads therefore have to wrap their goats in clothes. Inset: A goat with all of its hair eaten by its fellow goats because they seriously lack nutrition.

 

This village used to be the home of more than 4,000 people. By the year 2000, all of them had moved away and the village became completely deserted.