Ministers from 16 leading economies will agree a "Syracuse Charter" spelling out ways to reinforce and extend goals for 2010 that were set in 2002, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a news conference.

"Efforts must be redoubled and we must start thinking beyond 2010," he said.

Climate change is a growing threat to biodiversity at a time when a quarter of all animal and plant species may be at risk of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

"We must deliver together what science has told us," Swedish Environment Minister Andras Carlgren told the news conference, saying "carbon emissions must peak in 10 years."

On a hopeful note, he added: "There is no doubt that action on climate change will show the path out of the crisis and bring opportunities to business."

Delegates will pledge in the Syracuse Charter "to ensure that the current deep economic crisis does not translate into a reduction in resources for the protection of biodiversity," according to a draft obtained by AFP.

Noting that the global financial crisis is spurring major infrastructure projects to create employment, a set of guidelines for delegates to the talks warned that "such investments ... are the main cause of negative effects on the natural environment."

The cost of bailing out financial institutions during the economic meltdown, while huge, pales in comparison to the lost value caused every year by ecological damage to the environment, experts say.

The three-day meeting in Sicily brings together countries responsible for more than 40 percent of the world's carbon gas emissions.

The United States and China each use up about a fifth of total global biocapacity, but US per capita consumption is much higher.

The administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, was attending on her first international trip in the job.

The G8 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

The G8 is one of several forums on the way to a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December aimed at sealing an international pact for curbing greenhouse gases beyond 2012.

The G8 ministers have been joined by their counterparts from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, South Korea and Egypt.

The Czech Republic -- current holder of the rotating European Union presidency -- plus the European Commission and Denmark as host of the upcoming Copenhagen conference are also attending the talks.

The UN goal is either to halve emissions compared with a benchmark year, or to peg temperature increases below 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.

Some 1,000 activists staged a protest Thursday accusing the conference of being "part of the problem, not part of the solution."

The group Contro-G8 (Against G8) staged the protest far from the heavily secured G8 venue, the medieval Maniace Castle at the tip of a peninsula jutting off Syracuse.

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