Trajectories of biodiversity loss and extinction from trade globalization

Many economically developed countries are shifting an increasing proportion of their environmental impacts to other countries by importing goods, while developing countries are accelerating their domestic land-use change to produce goods for export. To understand the implications of this pattern for biodiversity, we combine a consumer-resource model of land-use change with a spatial model of habitat loss-driven extinctions. Our findings reveal that trade globalization can significantly alter species extinction trajectories, exacerbating global extinction waves when regions develop at different times. The impact on biodiversity varies between earlier- and later-developing regions, influenced by factors like trade connectivity and species’ range sizes. In birds, the best-studied class of animals, we find that data on extinction trends qualitatively fit with the “first phase” of our predictions: rates of extinction caused by land-use change are declining in developed countries, increasing in developing countries, and slowly declining overall (globally). However, our model predicts that continued spatial shifts in global land use, although difficult to project, have the potential to cause a resurgence of global extinctions (“second phase”) in birds and other taxa in the near future.