Counting the costs

ACROSS the brown hills of Zhongzhuang Village in northwest China, farmers count the costs of a changing climate in lost crops, dry wells and lives weighed down by poverty.

Villagers here plough their narrow, terraced fields dug into the brittle slopes much as they have for generations, with wooden ploughs and donkeys. But the seemingly timeless rhythms of this village in Yongjing county, Gansu province, have been changing.