Economic development, institutions, and biodiversity loss at the global scale

Gren, Ing‐Marie; Campos, Monica; Gustafsson, Lena

doi:10.1007/s10113-015-0754-9

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Partial support for a biodiversity EKC has only been found for threatened bird and mammal species in two multicountry analyses (McPherson & Nieswiadomy, 2005;Naidoo & Adamowicz, 2001), as well as for birds linked to some habitat types in a number of Canadian provinces (Lantz & Martínez-Espiñeira, 2008). However, several multicountry analyses found no evidence to support an EKC effect for a range of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity proxies, even supporting a trend in the opposite direction from that predicted by the EKC hypothesis (Clausen & York, 2008;Dietz & Adger, 2003;Gren, Campos, & Gustafsson, 2016;Majumder, Berrens, & Bohara, 2006;Mills & Waite, 2009).…”

Section: Decoupling Economic Grow Th From Biodiversit Y Loss?mentioning

confidence: 94%

Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

Otero

Farrell

Pueyo

et al. 2020

CONSERVATION LETTERS

194

141

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Increasing evidence-synthesized in this paper-shows that economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss via greater resource consumption and higher emissions.Nonetheless, a review of international biodiversity and sustainability policies shows that the majority advocate economic growth. Since improvements in resource use efficiency have so far not allowed for absolute global reductions in resource use and pollution, we question the support for economic growth in these policies, where inadequate attention is paid to the question of how growth can be decoupled from biodiversity loss. Drawing on the literature about alternatives to economic growth, we explore this contradiction and suggest ways forward to halt global biodiversity decline. These include policy proposals to move beyond the growth paradigm while enhancing overall prosperity, which can be implemented by combining top-down and bottom-up governance across scales. Finally, we call the attention of researchers and policy makers to two immediate steps: acknowledge the conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation in future policies; and explore socioeconomic trajectories beyond economic growth in the next generation of biodiversity scenarios.

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Section: Decoupling Economic Grow Th From Biodiversit Y Loss?mentioning

confidence: 94%

Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

Otero

Farrell

Pueyo

et al. 2020

CONSERVATION LETTERS

194

141

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Czech 2008;O'Neill 2012;Kopnina 2014a, b). The presupposition that economic development and overall higher income levels can mitigate biodiversity loss through improved willingness and affordability to implement measures such as protected areas, is not supported by evidence (Gren et al 2016). Simply, the Kuznets hypothesis does not work with biodiversity (Mills and Waite 2009).…”

Section: Second: the Utopia Of Peaceful Equal And Unified Humanitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem

Kopnina

Washington

Taylor

et al. 2018

J Agric Environ Ethics

282

139

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“…Furthermore, a study of 65 developing countries indicated that a higher level of democracy in 1990 was associated with a higher count of threatened mammal species in 2005, but there was a null finding concerning threatened bird species (Shandra et al 2010a). Another cross-sectional analysis, based on 140 countries in 2010, found that democracy was associated with less threatened mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile, and plant species, but only when economic development was higher (Gren et al 2016). Finally, one cross-section analysis of threatened mammals in 74 developing nations in the year of 2005 reported a null finding for democratic institutions in 1990 (Shandra et al 2009).…”

Section: Threatened Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2018), or the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) (e.g. Gren et al 2016). While these are widely used they do exhibit some shortcomings.…”

Section: Model Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our review documented a variety of conditional factors and non-linearities regarding the associations between democracy and the biodiversity conservation, ranging from colonial origins, over geographical regions to economic development (e.g. Povitkina et al 2015;Gren et al 2016;Marchand 2016). This suggests that unconditional models might be relatively restrictive.…”

Section: Model Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Linking democracy and biodiversity conservation: Empirical evidence and research gaps

Rydén

Zizka

Jagers

et al. 2019

Ambio

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Increasing human pressure threatens plant and animal species with extinction worldwide. National political institutions constitute an important arena for biodiversity conservation. Yet, the relationship between how democratic these national institutions are and a country's efforts towards and track-record for biodiversity conservation remains poorly understood. In this review, we outline the theoretical links between democracy and biodiversity conservation and review the empirical literature testing them. While more studies reported a positive than a negative relation between democracy and biodiversity conservation (15 vs. 11), the most common result was a mixed relationship (28), often conditioned on economic factors. The use of different proxies to measure biodiversity, including deforestation, protected areas, threatened species, and fishery statistics emerged as a primary obstacle for synthesis. We suggest overcoming this caveat together with a consistent definition of democratic institutions and a standardized statistical framework as research priorities to improve policies against the global biodiversity loss.

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Economic development, institutions, and biodiversity loss at the global scale

Cited by 25 publications

References 40 publications

Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem

Linking democracy and biodiversity conservation: Empirical evidence and research gaps

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