RISING economic prosperity is bad news for biodiversity. Contrary to economic
wisdom, most organisms do not benefit when human income levels go up,
researchers at the University of Alberta, Canada, have found. Birds are the only
animals to do well, they say.
“The often repeated claim that economic development will eventually result in
reduced environmental degradation does not hold when considering numbers of
threatened species,” biologist Robin Naidoo told the SCB’s annual conference
this week.
Previous studies have shown that environmental damage only gets worse to a
certain point. As incomes continue to rise, growing demand for environmental
quality reverses…
