U.N. experts to say 2010 biodiversity target elusive

By Madeline Chambers

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly 200 governments will say next week they are unlikely to meet a target of slowing the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010, a failure which could threaten future food supplies.

Up to 5,000 delegates and some heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will try to agree at the Convention of Biological Diversity in the German city of Bonn on ways to save plant and animal species.

U.N. experts say the planet is facing the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and some say three species vanish every hour as a result largely of human activity causing pollution and loss of habitat.

"We hope to give a wake-up call to humanity. We need an unprecedented effort to meet the challenge of biodiversity loss," convention Executive Secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf told Reuters in a telephone interview.

He said consumption had reached unsustainable levels and humans were destroying the foundation of life. Without a change in behavior, feeding up to 9 billion people would be difficult.

A surge in food prices, driven by booming demand in fast-growing economies such as China, has highlighted the problem and experts say the loss of plant species could be catastrophic for long-term food supplies.

Top of the agenda at the two-week meeting, opening on Monday, is an assessment of a U.N. goal set in 2002 to slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, which most experts say is nowhere near being met.

Djoghlaf says the latest data, which show more species are being lost more than in the past, is "frightening".