Nature & Environment

Two women sit on a parched river bed in Wuhan, China. For weeks, the water level in many parts of the Yangtze River was the lowest for the period since hydrological records began in 1865. In the summer of 2022, China was hit by its most severe heatwave in six decades, exacerbating a drought that has impacted food and factory production, power supplies and transport in a vast area of the country. The Yangtze River Basin, which stretches from coastal Shanghai to Sichuan province in China’s southwest and includes Asia’s longest river, was considered the worst-affected area, with hundreds of millions of people impacted.

Finalist

Ren Yong
Independent
China

RenYong is a photojournalist based in Wuhan, China. He has been working for more than 7 years as a photographer.

renuong