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Dry and cracked soil in Gansu Province.2009

“Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity”- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General. World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 2006.

A tourist stands on one of the large sand dunes that make up the Shapotou Desert tourist resort. The resort has provided jobs for local residents and has been a way for the local economy to benefit from the desert. 2009

“The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the ‘black disaster’, which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster”, says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived his entire life on the central grasslands of  Inner Mongolia, in Northern China. These legendary grasslands are slowly deteriorating, suffering as a result of the world’s least reported environmental crisis.

A theme park in Ningxia Province is shrouded in sand during a sandstorm. Sandstorms occur as the spring winds blow and throw dry and degraded topsoil into the air. 2009

Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and/or habitable land into desert, usually caused by overpopulation, water mismanagement, poor farming methods, the destructive use of land by industry and climate change.

Workers at the Shapotou desert theme park take a break as work slows. 2009

38% of the world’s surface area is now threatened by desertification, affecting countries across the world from North Africa, the countries of the Middle East, Australia, China and the western edge of South America.

A tourist runs in the desert in Ningxia province. 2009

“If we don’t take action, current trends suggest that by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide, 135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted”, Kofi Annan (2006).

Creeping sands in Inner Mongolia swallow a fence at the side of a road. 2009

In 2007 I began photographing the issue of desertification and how it was affecting the lives of people in one of the world’s hardest hit countries, China. With the help of grants from the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers in 2008 and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in 2009, I have been able to document how the people of China are being affected by this crisis, which has consumed over 20% of their country.

The grasslands of Inner Mongolia are suffering as a result of overgrazing and pressure put on them by rapid population and industry growth in the area. 2009

To learn more about how you can help combat desertification, please visit the Million Tree Project which aims to reforest areas of Inner Mongolia being affected by desertification.

A sandstorm descends on a bridge in Ningxia Province, bringing life to an almost standstill. 2009

Greenpeace China

Recently, I was approached by Greenpeace China do write a short article for their website about my work on desertification in China for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This has been a great chance to reach out to Greenpeace’s audience and inform them about the work that I have been doing on this subject. You can see the article here, or scroll down to read the text as it was published.

Beijing, China — China’s poverty-stricken northwest is swathed in sand. The deserts are creeping over ever larger areas, in part because of weather changes linked to climate change. Sean Gallagher a young British photographer travelled to Ningxia to document China’s growing sands.

“You can smell a sandstorm. As I woke this morning, my throat was drier than normal and the smell of dust and sand had crept into my room whilst I was sleeping. I opened my curtains expecting to see the Yellow River out of my window but all I could see was a haze of yellow light.” Sean Gallagher. Diary entry. April, 2009.

Greenpeace China Front Page

The sandstorm that descended on me that day was the most visually arresting sight I had seen during my time in China. Blocking out the sun, casting a yellow/orange light on the earth and bringing life to a standstill, I was experiencing something that was strangely unnerving. The underlying cause would prove to be even more so.

I was in a place called Shapotou, in the province of Ningxia. Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is a small province lying in Loess highlands of north-central China. Dry and desert-like, it is China’s poorest province and is the least visited by outsiders. It was the second of my stops on a 4000km journey across China documenting the effects of desertification on the north and west of the country for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. It was a journey that would take me to a city of environmental refugees, visit degraded grasslands, abandoned cities, desert theme parks and disappearing oases.

So what is desertification? The desertification of north and western China is arguably the most under-reported environmental crisis facing China today and is little understood outside the circles of NGOs and groups of scientists who are desperately fighting against it.

Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and/or habitable land into desert, usually caused by local and global climate change and more recently in China, fuelled by the destructive use of land in the forms of over-grazing, increased population, water mis-management and outdated farming methods. As land becomes degraded, the spring winds of northern-central China pick up sand and dust, hurling into the air creating vast sandstorms which batter the region.

Each year, desertification and drought account for US$42 billion loss in food productivity worldwide. In China, approximately 20% of land is now classified as desert or arid, and desertification is adversely affecting the lives of over 400 million people in China alone.

“Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity.  It is a global problem, affecting one fifth of the world’s population in more than 100 countries”, stated former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a message on World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought in 2006. “If we don’t take action, current trends suggest that by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide, 135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted.”

]]> http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2010/02/10/chinas-growing-sands-on-greenpeace-china/feed/ 0 http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2010/01/25/new-store-buy-prints-offset-carbon-emissions-combat-desertification/ http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2010/01/25/new-store-buy-prints-offset-carbon-emissions-combat-desertification/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:33:19 +0000 sgallagher http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/?p=1710

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I am happy to announce the addition of the Sean Gallagher Photography Store to this site! In the store you will find a selection of prints for sale, both framed and unframed. Whether buying for yourself, or as a gift for a friend or family member, the wide range of images offers a broad selection to suit everybody’s taste in images.

MTP

To kick the store off, I have teamed up with the Jane Goodall ‘Roots and Shoots’ and Million Tree Project to provide a special offer on anyone buying prints where the subject is desertification. When you purchase a print depicting desertification from the store, 10% of the proceeds will be donated directly to the Million Tree Project who will use your money to plant trees in areas of Inner Mongolia that are being severely affected by desertification.

1 tree costs only 25 Chinese Renminbi (= approx. US$3.7 / GBP2.3 /  Euro 2.6), therefore purchasing a print at US$200 will result in the planting of 5 trees (5.4 to be exact)! To learn more about the project, please click on the Million Tree Project logo above.

*Buy prints, offset your carbon emissions and directly help combat desertification*

1/11 - 29.3in x 21.7in (74.5cm x 55cm) - Shapotou Couple- US$250 (excl. P&P)

Heat of the Moment

Over at the Pulitzer Gateway, I am now taking questions from students in the US about the effects of desertification in China and how I reported on the subject last year. As part of the Pulitzer Center’s efforts to break down the barriers between reporters and their readers, they have provided a great venue for people to log-on, view the reporting and then ask the written journalists/videographers/photographers how and why they reported these issues.

As well as my work on desertification in China, there are many other fascinating stories on diverse subjects such as ‘flooding and drought in Mozambique’, ‘climate refugees in the south Pacific’, ‘water issues in Ethiopia’ and reports from COP15 by Pulitzer journalists. Spend some time there and find out about some of the ways we are all being affected by climate change.

Student Questions

The first of the videos can be found below.

Question 1 “Why did you decide to report on this issue?”

Please head here to view answers to the following questions: What was your biggest hurdle reporting on this issue? How is this story related to issues in the US? How has climate change news coverage evolved since you started reporting on these issues, and what could be done better?

BBC World Service

Last month I was interviewed by the BBC World Service’s Outlook programme for an article on my work on desertification for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The interview ran over the new year and has proved to be a wonderful new way to spread the message about this issue (the BBC World Service gets around 37 million listeners worldwide apparently).

If you missed it, then you can click on this link here to listen to the entire interview.

Here is the text that ran on the BBC World Service Website:

“Some of the most striking images on display at December’s Copenhagen climate change conference were pictures of China taken by a young British photographer.

Sean Gallagher travelled across the world’s most populated country on what is known as the ‘desertification train.’

And he documented his journey in photos to show how life is a constant struggle for those living on the edges of China’s deserts.

BBC World Service

China is fighting a war against creeping sand – year on year its deserts are expanding and joining to create a massive dustbowl.

It is estimated that 20 per cent of China’s land area – some 1.74 million square kilometers – is now classified as desert.

One of the main stops on Sean’s trip was Hongsibao – an environmental refugee town built from scratch by the Chinese Government to house those forced from their homes by the sandstorms and water shortages.

Lucy Ash spoke to Sean and asked him how these environmental refugees feel about their new home.”

New York Times' Lens Blog

A couple of online publications this week that I’d like to share with you this week.

NYT

The first one was on the New York Times’ Lens Blog which appeared on their site on Tuesday. James Estrin of the NYT wrote a very nice piece on me and my work on ‘China’s Growing Sands for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and ran a gallery of 18 images to go with it. I’m really happy that the work has found this online platform and will reach out to so many people. Click on the image above to take you to the article.

bit.yl

It’s hard to know how much ‘reach’ work gets when it is published online. Of course I use things such as Google Analytics to track hits to my website and blog, but how do you track social networks passing on links about your work? Well, one of the tools I use is this website bit.yl This site allows you to shorten your links into handier bite-size lengths, then track them, in terms of numbers of clicks. Using this, I know that just through Twitter the link was viewed over 300 times. A modest amount, but that is another 300 people viewing the work, on top of those through Pulitzer, my blog, you tube etc. etc. over the past few months.

Socialdocumentary.net

Also this week, the website Socialdocumentray.net published a series of my pictures on the story of homeless communties in Mongolia. This body of work is in the pool of entries for the “Crisis and Opportunity: Documenting the Global Recession’ Competition. If you like the story, please help spread the word and awareness of this issue.

A sandstorm in China's central Ningxia Province. 2009

As many followers of my work and my blog will know, much of my work falls within the category of environmental photography. As talks begin in Copenhagen today, on the immediate future plans of our governments to tackling climate change, it seemed appropriate to write a special blog post on photographing climate issues in China. In between the text are some of my favourite images from my work on climate change here in China.

A lone chimney stack on the outskirts of Baoding, China's first carbon-positive city. 2009

It seems that photographing climate issues have become quite a trendy topic recently. Magnum photographer Martin Parr recently described it as “as hip as it gets” in a recent blog post (via/ the excellent Duckrabbit, who do sterling work on Climate issues in Bangladesh, by the way). This is all unsurprising really. Climate change is the story of our generation and it’s a bandwagon that everyone should be jumping on. Our responsibility as photographers comes with truly understanding the issues we are photographing and being clear in the message that we are trying to convey with our pictures.

The blade of a wind turbine. 2009

I like to think I have a slight advantage in covering climate issues as my educational background stems from that direction. My interest in the sciences stemmed from high school in northern rural England and was fuelled by a degree in Zoology. Whilst many of my course colleagues and friends went off into scientific research, teaching and working for science journals, I decided to follow my passion for photography. I naturally gravitated towards photographing environmental issues. Now, my bookshelves are lined with as many books about photography as about science.

A worker in a factory producing solar panels. 2009

Today, I find myself in China photographing from the front line of climate change. During my time in the country, I have photographed air pollution, desertification, environmental refugees, sandstorms, disappearing grasslands, wind power, solar manufacturing etc. all key instruments and factors in the myriad of ways China is involved with how our world is changing.

Air pollution hanging over Shanghai. 2008

I really do hope that some kind of concrete and progressive agreements will be agreed upon this week which start to push us in the right direction, however I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t skeptical and a little pessimistic. What can I do? How can I make even a jot of difference? Well, it is up to me to try and get my work out there. ‘Out there’ in the sense of getting it in front of the eyes of people that matter. That includes you. I want you to see what I am seeing and witnessing here in China and present it in a way that is clear, reasoned and visually arresting. Why? Because we should all know what is happening to our planet. What happens here in China affects you, wherever you may be reading this from.

Tourists travelling on the Yangtze River near to the Three Gorges Dam. 2008

This week, my work on desertification will be shown in Copenhagen as part of the Earth Journalism Awards. I received an honorable mention for my work on “China’s Growing Sands” and I am delighted visitors to the summit will have a chance to view my images from my work on desertification. This will be my small contribution. As I have blogged about before however, I am increasingly pushing this work online and in print into as many different outlets as possible, trying to spread the word.

Human remains in the abandoned city of Yingpan in Xinjiang province. 2009

My single goal as a photographer is assist in the understanding between cultures and people. It’s a simple goal. I have no delusions that I think my photography ‘will change the world’ but I hope that it informs and increases awareness. I just want to understand the world better myself. I hope when others look at my images, they can understand it more with me. With a camera in my hand, I think I can do this and do my part. As one of my heroes, the late Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffith’s, said, “You have to leave this world a better place.” Let’s hope our leaders do.

]]> http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2009/12/07/climate-change-copenhagen-and-china-special-post/feed/ 0 http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2009/12/04/youtube-channel/ http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2009/12/04/youtube-channel/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:51:57 +0000 sgallagher http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/?p=1496

YouTube

I haven’t announced this officially but I now have a YouTube channel! As I have started to produce more video work and multimedia over the past few months, I obviously want to get this work out to as many people as possible and YouTube seems to be the perfect venue as it is possible to upload multimedia content, even without video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I currently have 5 entries on the channel; ‘Inside North Korea Parts 1, 2 and 3′, ‘China’s Growing Sands’ for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and ‘China’s 60th Anniversary Preparation in Hangzhou’, for the Globe and Mail. By far the most popular video so far has been Part 1 of Inside North Korea which has nearly 1,000 views. A modest amount.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have embedded a couple of the videos here on this blog entry but please go to the channel here to subscribe and have a look at some of the videos and spread the word to others who you feel may be interested in the work I am doing.

BritCham

I have been invited to speak at the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, on January 14th 2010, speaking about my work for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on ‘China’s Growing Sands’. If you are in town on the date, please come along! This is a rescheduled event from last year, so hopefully this will give more people a chance to come along and see images from my work covering desertification. All the details of the event can be found below. Hope to see you there!

Event Name – Speakers’ Corner: China’s Growing Sands

Speaker(s) – Sean Gallagher, Photographer

Date and Time – Thursday 14th January 2010, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Venue – Mesa & Manifesto, 748 Julu Lu, near Fu Min Lu,T: 6289 9108

Cost – Member: RMB 120, Non-member: RMB 150

Payment Method – Pay at the event

Contact Details – events@sha.britcham.org / +86 (21) 6218 5022

BritCham Shanghai

Speakers’ Corner

China’s Growing Sands

Guest speaker: Sean Gallagher

Join us at this month’s Speakers’ Corner where award winning photographer Sean Gallagher will be showcasing his latest work “China’s Growing Sands”, a project highlighting desertification in China sponsored by The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Desertification (the gradual transformation of habitable farmable land to desert) together with drought is estimated to cause approximately 42 billion USD in loss of food production each year worldwide and affects over 400 million people in China alone.  With just under 20% of China’s total land mass classified as desert, desertification in China is arguably one of China’s most pressing but under reported environmental concerns.  At this event Sean will talk about his journey on the ‘desertification train’ travelling 4000km from Beijing through China¡¯s major northern deserts to Xinjiang, reporting on the growing crisis and its effects on the people and cultures living in affected areas.