Is there a peaceful cohabitation between human and natural habitats? Assessing global patterns of species loss

Abstract

The ongoing ecological crisis has motivated systematic studies on biodiversity loss, mostly pointing to economic and human population pressure as root causes of natural habitat destruction. The present paper proposes to globally assess the case of threatened animal and plant species, discussing whether the cohabitation between human habitat and biodiversity (natural habitat) is peaceful. Thereby, by controlling for species richness and reverse causality, we find that the number of threatened species depicts an inverted U-shaped relationship with income per capita. We also find that the more biological species-rich a country is, the more threatened species it holds. Moreover, compared to low-income countries, high-income countries definitely appear to be threatening fewer animal and plant species, suggesting a possible peaceful cohabitation. Other factors like production structure (mostly secondary and tertiary) and trade seem to be some of the forces behind the peaceful cohabitation observed in high-income countries.