Consumption,a threat to vulnerable species- Study

The developed world’s insatiable appetite for products such as coffee and timber is threatening the survival of one in three vulnerable animal species in poor countries, AFP reports said citing an Australian study.

Academics at the University of Sydney spent five years tracking the world economy, evaluating over five billion supply chains connecting consumers to over 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries. They particularly focused on the global trade of goods implicated in biodiversity loss such as coffee, cocoa, and lumber, with the data cross-referenced with a global register of 25,000 vulnerable species.

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, concluded that international trade chains can accelerate degradation in locations far removed from where the product is bought.”Until now these relationships have only been poorly understood,” said lead author Manfred Lenzen, from the university’s Integrated Sustainability Analysis group.”

Our extraordinary number crunching, which took years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, let us see these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time.”

The study showed that in countries such as Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, (PNG), Sri Lanka and Honduras, 50 to 60 percent of biodiversity loss was linked to exports, mostly to meet demand from richer countries.

It cited the example of spider monkeys threatened by habitat loss because of strong demand for coffee and an increase in cocoa plantations in Mexico and Central America.In Papua New Guinea, it said 171 species, including the black-spotted cuscus and eastern long-beaked echidna, were threatened by export industries including mining and timber to a few large trading partners, including Australia.