Governments must come up with a 10-year "bailout" plan to stop wildlife disappearing across the planet, conservationists urged yesterday as they warned nature was at crisis point.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature said countries were fuelling their economies at the expense of protecting the natural world.
But the planet would pay a much higher price in the long run than it could afford if it ignored the need for action to save the wildlife the world depended on, the organisation warned.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of the scientific advisory body for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the IUCN said governments had failed to meet targets to halt biodiversity loss by this year.
The meeting will take decisions that will provide a scientific basis for the CBD's key meeting in Japan in October, and the IUCN said scientists, including its own, would be working with governments to draw up a "big plan" on how to save life on Earth.
Bill Jackson, IUCN deputy director-general, said 21 per cent of all known mammals, 30 per cent of all known amphibians, 12 per cent of all known birds, 17 per cent of sharks and 27 per cent of reef-building corals assessed by the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species were at risk of extinction.
He said: "If the world made equivalent losses in share prices, there would be a rapid response and widespread panic, as we saw in the recent economic crisis.
"The loss of biodiversity, crucial to life on Earth, has in comparison produced little response.
"By ignoring the urgent need for action we stand to pay a much higher price in the long term than the world can afford."
The IUCN said decisions which could help reverse downward trends in species could be made at the meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, this week, if governments accept the science that is presented to them.
Issues which will be discussed include wildlife in protected areas, inland waters, marine and coastal areas, links between biodiversity and climate change, biofuels and invasive species.
Jane Smart, director of the IUCN biodiversity conservation group, warned: "Countries are taking a very short-sighted view of the need to fuel their economies at the expense of nature, so much so that we're now at crisis point when it comes to loss of biodiversity.