Dabali Village in western Liaoning Province is quiet in this early winter. Few pedestrians can be seen in the country lanes.

"We have been hit by the severest drought since 1952, causing us to harvest almost nothing from the field. Many young villagers have gone to work elsewhere," said Yan Yuguo, Party branch secretary of the village.

Unbeknownst to the villagers, the United Nations Climate Change Conference on the other side of the globe was busy addressing issues such as these. The disastrous effects of climate change exert great influences on people's lives, and many in China suffer from poverty because of it.

The drought in western Liaoning began in late June and lasted for two months, with extreme high temperatures and sparse rainfall victimizing about 4.9 million acres of farmland. Among them, 823,696 acres had no harvest at all, and total drought victims reached 3 million.

Western Liaoning borders the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, with the frail ecology constantly beset by droughts. It suffered through a drought every year from 2006 to 2009, causing the farmers to freefall into poverty.

"In developing countries such as China, impoverished areas such as west Liaoning contribute the least to global warming, yet they are the first to bear the brunt of disasters caused by climate change," said Lin Erda, director of the Agriculture and Climate Change Center of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

According to "China's Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change - The Progress Report 2009," issued by the National Development and Reform Commission in November, China's climate change trends were keeping in step with the world. The average increase in temperature in the past 100 years was 1.1 degrees Celsius, only slightly higher than the world average.

Lin said that poverty-stricken areas in China coincided with areas influenced by climate change. People in impoverished areas were more likely to also be climate change victims, with worsening natural environment conditions and living standards causing poverty to linger.

According to Lin, climate disasters and disease were two major reasons for poverty's return, with the impact of climatic change in ecologically frail areas only worsening the issue. Disasters such as drought, high temperature, sandstorms, plant diseases, and insect pestilence have all happened more frequently in a larger number of areas, with increasingly severe aftermaths.

In the yard of 56-year-old farmer Song Baolin of Heidagou Village in Liaoning laid a dozen Chinese cabbages. His granary was completely empty.

"There are four people in my family. All the corn I planted this year in my 1.6-acre field died because of drought," said Song, deeply worried about how he was going to make a living without anything to harvest.

Temperatures in northwest China have also risen, according to observation data of 128 climate and stream flow measuring stations. The average temperature during 1987 to 2000 was 0.7 Celsius degrees higher than the average from 1961 to 1986.

Youngjing County in Gansu Province is one of the key counties of the national poverty alleviation plan. The temperature there has risen every year since the 1980s while the amount of precipitation has steadily decreased, sharply raising the frequency of severe drought.

In southwest China, Mabian Yi Autonomous County in Sichuan Province experienced similar adverse effects due to climate change. In the last 50 years, the county had become hotter and less humid, but the precipitation intensity increased, causing regional floods.

In order to deal with climate change-caused poverty, China has taken to actions such as relocating villages, training migrant laborers and supporting rural industries. According to the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, there were 14.79 million rural people in poverty in 2007, a monumental decrease from 250 million in 1978. However, in 2008, based on the new poverty line of a 1,196 yuan annual income (about US$ 175), the number of people in poverty in rural areas reached 40.07 million.

Fortunately, there are still those, such as Yan Yusheng in Dabali Village, who are benefiting from poverty alleviation policies. Though he harvested nothing this year, the local government gave him a 40,000 yuan (US$ 5,857) subsidy and helped him get a loan of about 60,000 yuan (about US$ 8,787). He built two vegetable greenhouses and planted tomatoes, cucumbers and chilies. Now, having earned thousands of yuan, he is optimistic about the future.

"It should not be a problem for me to pay the loan. I believe I can make 50,000 yuan (about US$ 7,321) a year," said Yan, quoting a number that is rather high for local farmers.

Though the policies were effective in some places in China, Director Lin Erda suggested that the international community and Chinese government should develop more specific poverty alleviation strategies based on regional differences to eliminate poverty caused by climate change.

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