Environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev said Wednesday that an expert panel had concluded that between $150-440 billion (115 to 330 billion euros) would be needed annually to meet the Japan goals, dubbed the Aichi biodiversity targets.
Current conservation spending is estimated at about $10 billion per year.
With a 2020 deadline, the targets include halving the rate of habitat loss, expanding conservation areas, preventing the extinction of species on the threatened list, and restoring at least 15 percent of degraded ecosystems.
“The cost of inaction is something that people have only just begun to appreciate,” UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner warned.
“When you run out of water, when you run out of arable land… and your rivers run dry, when your lakes silt up, when your fisheries collapse, then it is often too late to start talking about the value of biodiversity ecosystems.”
The three-day ministers’ meeting comes at the end of two weeks of talks by senior officials from 184 parties to the conference – negotiations that delegates say have become stuck on the question of financing in a time of economic austerity.
The convention, to which 193 countries are signatories, marks its 20th anniversary this year.
It has already missed one key deadline when it failed to meet the target set to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.
The updated Red list, assessing 65,518 known species of animals and plants, lists 795 as extinct and 63 as surviving only in captivity.
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