Sheep Herder in Inner Mongolia

64 year old herder Li Lu is the owner of 40 sheep and 1 hectare of corn field. He lives next to the mouth of a water well in an area affected by severe desertification. Ten years ago, he had 80 sheep, but now with not enough grass to feed them, he had to decrease their number. Haolebaoji, Ordos, Inner Mongolia. For ten years, the Chinese state-run organisation Shenhua Group, has been exploiting water resources at a shocking scale from the Ordos grasslands to use in its coal-to-liquid project (a process for producing liquid fuel from coal) and illegally dumping toxic industrial waste water. Shenhua's operations have sparked social unrest and caused severe ecological damage including desertification, impacting farmers and herders who are facing reduced water supplies in what was once an abundant farming area.