Climate change and desertification two sides of same coin

Climate change and desertification are two sides of the same coin and must be tackled together, according to participants at the Madrid conference on desertification. "These two issues are very intimately related in the way you can describe them as two halfs of a coin," according to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Spanish Environment Minister Cristina Narbona also addressed the twin problem during a round table discussion Wednesday on "desertification and adaptation to climate change" at the UN-sponsored conference which opened on September 3.