Kim Jong Ok, an official of the Ministry of Land and Environment Protection, told KCNA on June 17, the World Day for Combating Desertification and Drought:

The DPRK government is working hard to remove negative influences due to the desertification and drought and to prevent them.

The DPRK adopted the laws on land, protection of environment, forest and river to provide legal foundations for preventing climatic change by air pollution and desertification of land.

Every year the DPRK government has increased investment in these fields and conducted the work for environmental protection as the nationwide and all-people movement in the spring and autumn periods of the general mobilization for land administration and in tree-planting months.

It is also making efforts to dredge and clean rivers, increase fertility of soil and prevent drought.

It is boosting cooperation with international organizations.

Under the cooperation of UNDP, plans of strengthening ecosystem resilience and community adaptive capacity in climate-affected river basins and strengthening the resilience of communities through community-based disaster risk management have been implemented to push ahead with anti-land-sliding project, embankment and afforestation in Kaechon City and Yangdok County of South Phyongan Province and other places of the country.

The unit 4 of the mission of the European Union Programme Support and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in the DPRK have made efforts to increase the fertility of land, protect land by the bioengineering method, plant trees and build facilities for water storage as part of sustainable livelihood and disaster mitigation and natural disaster risk reduction activities, thus reducing damage caused by desertification and drought and bringing the residents' living to normal.