GERMANY:THE GALLOPING destruction of flora and fauna costs the world €2 trillion annually - six per cent of the planet's total income - with the poor bearing the brunt of the cost, a new report has stated.
The report, commissioned by the EU and the German federal government, will be presented at the two-week UN Convention of Biological Diversity, which begins today in Bonn.
Officials from 191 countries, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, will admit in Bonn that they are unlikely to meet targets of slowing the rate of species extinction by 2010.
Indeed the destruction of natural habitats and pollution has created the worst rate of species extinction - three an hour - since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
A report issued by the UN's World Conservation Union says that the endangered list includes one in four mammal species, one in eight bird types, a third of amphibian varieties and 70 per cent of all plant life.
Failure to stop unsustainable consumption could threaten future food supplies, UN officials say, and destroy the foundation of human life.
Organisers hope spiralling food prices and resulting food riots around the world will concentrate minds on agreements to achieve greater agricultural diversity.
"The international community's best long-term solution to meet the global food challenge is to renew agricultural diversity of crops and livestock backed by a functional natural support system," said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
"During the past 50 years, humans have altered ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other period in human history," he added.