Today (27 January), a dust storm hit the southeastern Mongolian province of Dornogovi, causing low visibility on roads. The unstable weather was expected to prevail during the weekend. Dornogovi, located in the Gobi Desert region of southern Mongolia, is one of the provinces most affected by desertification.

Around 90 percent of the province’s total territory had been somehow affected by desertification and land degradation, according to the provincial governor’s office.

Mongolian sand and dust storms are an age-old phenomenon. Inter-annual variability is great, but March 2021 saw two extreme dust storm events with human security impacts reaching from Mongolia and China to Korea and Japan. The principal challenges to human security posed by Mongolian dust storms are food insecurity, threats to human health, and infrastructure degradation, plus human migration to escape those impacts. In order to fight this situation, Mongolia launched a national campaign initiated by President U.Khurelsukh in 2021 to plant a billion trees by 2030 to combat climate change and desertification, in which Dornogovi set a target of planting at least 20 million trees.