Further, closely related article from BBC includes:
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.
Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.
…
"Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)… 27% of reef-building corals assessed… are threatened with extinction," said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the Red List.
"If the world made equivalent losses in share prices, there would be a rapid response and widespread panic."
…
"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).
"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.
"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."