World leaders who oppose a global agreement to tackle climate change are making a similar mistake to the one made by politicians who tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War Two, a British government minister said on Thursday.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne said governments must redouble efforts to find a successor to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on emissions, althoug

Britain needs to spend up to one billion pounds a year to protect fragile English wildlife habitats from climate change, intensive farming and population growth, a government-backed report said on Friday.

It urged the government to transform conservation policy in the next 40 years to avoid a devastating loss of the countryside that supports thousands of important plants, trees and animals.

British ecologist John Lawton, who led the year-long study, said England's wildlife habitats are too small and isolated to protect many species from increased strains in coming decades.

Creating a stronger, better connected network of well-managed habitats will cost between 600 million pounds and 1.1 billion pounds each year, the report estimated.

At a time of big public spending cuts, the study urged the government to resist taking money away from the environment.

"It is easy to say we cannot afford it. We fundamentally disagree," it said. "We are ... despite current difficulties, a wealthy nation."

Failure to act could lead to the loss of areas rich with diverse species, such as meadows, heathland, woods and rivers, the report said. Centuries of human activity have helped to shape these habitats and they will need ongoing management if they are to survive, it said.

The United Nations called on world leaders this week to take bold action to preserve animal and plant species. It says the world is facing the worst losses since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.

England has at least 55,000 species, including significant numbers of bats, bumblebees, wildfowl and mature oak trees.

The pace and scale of environmental change over the last 50 years was worrying and is likely to get worse, the report said.

Future threats include extreme weather, droughts, rising sea levels and the loss of areas like wet grasslands to farming to feed a growing population, the report said.

Its authors made 24 recommendations to create stronger habitats. The measures include better management of habitats, setting up new ecological restoration zones and improved water quality and flood protection.

A coalition of more than 500 international companies on Tuesday urged rich countries to commit to "immediate and deep" cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at U.N. climate talks to help combat global warming.

Britain must find ways to grow more food while using less water, energy and fertilizers to help feed a growing world population and offset the effects of climate change on agriculture, the government said on Monday.

A senior minister said last year's sharp rise in the cost of food and oil and a severe drought in Australia showed the urgent need to develop a food security plan.

The quest for unlimited economic growth is unsustainable and could bankrupt the environment through climate change and depleted natural resources, Britain's Prince Charles said Wednesday.

Climate change could lead to a rise in average summer temperatures in parts of Britain that is nearly double the level which the European Union and others say is dangerous, a study said on Thursday.

The world's biggest greenhouse gas producers have edged closer to agreement on a deal to fight global warming at crucial climate change talks in December, Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice said on Thursday.

From the rainforests of Africa to the mountain-top coal mines of West Virginia, six campaigners who have fought governments and industry to protect the planet won prestigious Goldman Environmental Prizes on Sunday.

Public awareness about the "catastrophe" of climate change is not high enough to pressure politicians into taking action, former Vice President Al Gore said on Tuesday.

Gore, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his environmental campaigning, said politicians will only do more once the people who elect them force the issue.