A few days ago I linked to a press announcement of a paper that was about to appear in PLoS ONE. That article has now appeared. The authors found “found that among countries, and among US states, the number of species that are threatened or declining increases substantially with the Gini ratio of income inequality.”
Income inequality causes biodiversity loss. If this were the case, then reducing income inequality would lead to less biodiversity loss. It would mean that focusing on a social good – reducing income inequality – will have the additional benefit of reducing threats to biodiversity. This is the interpretation consistent with the authors' statements in the press release I linked to earlier this week.
Biodiversity loss causes income inequality. If this were the case, then reducing biodiversity loss would lead to a reduction in income inequality. It might provide additional motivation for efforts to reduce the loss of biodiversity. It would suggest that efforts to reduce biodiversity loss benefit not only the wealthy, but also those who are less fortunate.
Another factor or set of factors causes both income inequality and biodiversity loss. If I had to bet, this is the one I'd put my money on. If this were the case it would mean that focusing attention on either biodiversity loss or income inequality might do little to alleviate the other.
The connection between income inequality and biodiversity loss raises some tantalizing possibilities about strategies both for improving the economic prospects of those who are poor and for reducing the rate of extinction. But further research will be needed to determine whether those joint benefits require a primary focus on reducing income inequality, on reducing the rate of extinction, or on modifying some more fundamental aspect of economic systems.
1The R2 for the regression line shown in the comparison among countries is 0.86. The R2 for the regression line shown in the comparison among U.S.states is 0.53.
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