India, April 19 -- I ntense dust storms loom over Beijing regularly now, some unlike anything seen before this decade. Photos from 2023 show the sky over the country's capital glowing an eerie orange. The government has taken to issuing warnings, to let residents know when they should avoid stepping outdoors. A key driver is land degradation and the desertification of the surrounding region. Elsewhere in China, cities are suffer- ing from land subsidence as booms in urbanisation intensify the extraction of groundwater. A 2024 national-scale assessment led by South China Normal University, published in the journal Science, found that about 67 million people now live in areas subsiding at a rate of more than 10 mm a year. Underground urban tr...