I am a member and a volunteer translator of the environmental NGO KFEM(Korean Federation for Environmental Movements). I receive various articles about the environment of Korea or other Asian countries and translate them into either Korean or English. One of them was about the problems of desertification in the Chinese inlands- Mogolia, also called the Nei meng gu province, is suffering extremely from the drastic decrease of grasslands and the increase of desert areas.

The biggest victims of this sad phenomena are the local ranchers and farmers. They have lost the grasslands in which they used to feed their sheep, cattle, horses and camels. They have also lost their old water supply, the lake Chakan Nor(the Mogolian word for "White lake").

Originally this lake was made up of two lakes-one small freshwater lake and one big saltwater lake. Due to human activities such as excessive grazing of livestock, mine digging, and development of grasslands has caused the lands to become bare-and as a result, the saltwater lake(a lake the size of Bucheon city itself) dried up completely in 2008.

The salt contents that were mixed in the lakewater now lies in the bottom of the bare lake, and when strong winds blow, they are carried to as far as Korea and Japan, and cause serious health damages.

What can be done to counter this disastrous problem?