World’s Richest Nations Are ‘Exporting Extinction’ With Demand for Agricultural and Forestry Imports: Study
The richest countries in the world are “exporting extinction” by destroying 15 times more biodiversity globally than they do within their own borders, according to a new Princeton University study.
The researchers found that 13.3 percent of biodiversity loss worldwide came from the consumption of high-income countries, a press release from Princeton said.
“Biodiversity loss has accelerated at an alarming rate in recent decades, driven largely by human activities such as clearing forests to grow crops or harvest timber. While countries often degrade ecosystems within their own borders through these activities, they also play a significant role in driving habitat loss overseas by outsourcing agricultural production, i.e., importing food or timber from other countries, thereby leading those other countries to destroy their forests to produce the exports,” the press release said.
The study is the first to quantify the degree of countries’ contributions to worldwide biodiversity loss when they shift the environmental impact of their consumption abroad.