The Global Water Crisis, in Pictures

In 2015, the photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz was living in China. For two months, he had been photographing the Yangtze River, crowded with shipping containers transporting materials between cities. One morning, Abdulaziz ventured to Donting Lake, a flood basin of the Yangtze, before sunrise. Amid all the ships and cranes, he noticed sand dredgers dotting the water, pulling up the floor of the lake for use in construction.

The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world, and—though efforts to preserve the waterway are in place—China’s fast-paced development has polluted the river and threatened its aquatic life. The photograph that Abdulaziz took of the sand dredger that day, he says, conveys the sadness he felt witnessing the machine digging through the water for materials to fuel the developments that continue to threaten the river.