This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Nature provides resources to society, and the diversity of species (think of pollinators, for example) is expected to underpin human economies. So why are the poorest countries also those richest in wildlife, containing a high number of different species?
The reason, according to new research, is that colonial exploitation of that biodiversity by now-rich countries created poverty legacies that persist today. The research team, from Trinity, the University of Bern, the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, and the Wyss Academy for Nature, assessed datasets from 168 countries, including World Bank poverty statistics, biodiversity records, governance indicators, colonial history and protected-area coverage. The headline finding was that the regions most targeted by colonial powers were generally those richest in biodiversity, which has contributed to modern structures of poverty.
Conor Waldock, an assistant professor in Trinity's School of Natural Sciences, is a lead author on the interdisciplinary research team that recently published the work in the journal People and Nature. He said, "We know that in precolonial times, tropical and subtropical regions were often prosperous compared with European countries. This pattern aligns with the concept that biological diversity should support prosperity through the many benefits of nature, such as food, fibers and medicine." "But colonial powers violently extracted plants and animals, enslaved people, and stole agricultural resources from these biodiverse regions for centuries.
This eventually led to local economies being forcibly structured around the export of raw natural resources such as fiber, rubber, timber, pelts, dyes and spices." "Now, developed economies process and then sell natural resources back to their source countries at a heavily inflated price, creating unequal exchange in resources and feeding inequality." "The institutions and governance systems initially built to exploit natural resources and left behind after colonization ended were weakened and economically exploited through neoliberal economic policies such as structural adjustment programs—and these effects appear to persist and drive poverty to this day." Anna Samwel of the University of Bern added, "Colonialism played a key role in the impoverishment of nations rich in biodiversity by promoting resource extraction and unfair trade practices, and by replacing Indigenous land stewardship with aggressive commercial exploitation aimed at Western profits." In other words, biodiversity didn't cause poverty. But it did make a region more likely to be colonized, and colonization drove the structure of poverty we see today. To make matters worse, the researchers also found that poorer, biodiversity-rich nations shoulder a disproportionate burden of global conservation efforts.
Some practical examples illustrating how colonial legacies continue to negatively affect biodiversity-rich countries include: This work shows that the colonial link between biological diversity and poverty must be addressed in global policy initiatives to avoid reinforcing values that slow progress toward a more sustainable planet. Ultimately, it shows that conservation needs a fundamental rethink. Waldock added, "This work underlines that we need to change who makes conservation decisions, who funds them, and who benefits.
Global trade systematically shifts environmental costs onto poorer nations, so telling these same countries that their path out of poverty lies in conserving their nature, without acknowledging or addressing their history, risks repeating old patterns under a new name." Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly. "Life on earth is under increasing pressure from habitat destruction, overexploitation and climate change. To address the ongoing biodiversity crisis, governments around the world have agreed to protect 30% of the world's oceans and land area by 2030 under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
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