BONN, Germany (AFP) - Environmental damage and species loss costs between 1.35 and 3.1 trillion euros (2.1 to 4.8 trillion dollars) every year, according to a report released Thursday at a major UN conference on biodiversity.

The study, commissioned by the European Union (EU) and the German government, is the biggest assessment ever made of the economic impact of ecological damage, and supporters compared it to the famous "Stern Report" on the cost of climate change.

It was issued at a meeting of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, a 12-day meeting in Bonn of 6,000 representatives from 191 nations due to wind up on Friday.

The report, entitled "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity," attaches a monetary value to species and to environmental assets that usually are not considered in cash terms.

It looks, for instance, at the dollar value of clean water, healthy soil, protection from floods and soil erosion, natural medicines and natural sinks that store greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane.

"Though our wellbeing is totally dependent on these 'ecosystem services', they are predominantly public goods with no markets and no prices," the report notes.

Principal author Pavan Sukhdev, who heads Deutsche Bank's global markets business in India, described this lack as "trying to navigate uncharted and turbulent waters with an old and defective economic compass."

Sukhdev warned that some ecosystems were probably already damaged beyond repair, and predicted other systems would be badly wounded unless protective measures were urgently taken.

-- 40 percent of land currently under low-impact agriculture could become intensively farmed, accelerate biodiversity losses;

Full Story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080529/sc_afp/environmentbiodiversityunclimateeconomy

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