The head of environmental pressure group Greenpeace warned Friday the world faced a "perfect storm" of crises and was heading for what he termed a crisis of "epic proportions."

Speaking for the first time at the Munich Security Conference, Kumi Naidoo presented an apocalyptic version of the state of the world and accused leaders of "sleepwalking" into disaster.

"The moment of history we are in can be described as a boiling point or a perfect storm," he told the assembled gathering of world leaders, ministers, top brass and defence policy experts at the annual Munich gathering.

"We are seeing a convergence of multiple crises happening at the same time. A food crisis, climate crisis, poverty crisis ... and then of course the financial crisis and a demographic crisis and a global governance democratic crisis," he added.

"The bottom line is that too many of our leaders ... are sleepwalking us into a crisis of epic proportion," he claimed.

Greenpeace was invited for the first time to the conference, which has this year as its star turn US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and focuses on the rise of Asia and the impact on the transatlantic alliance.