Development and biodiversity conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa: A spatial analysis
Résumé
The current study seeks to provide a sound analysis of the relationship between economic development and species
loss in Sub-Saharan African countries. The motivation is that a better understanding of the impact of economic
development on species loss is of great relevance, given the current rapid extinction of species along with challenges
born from the context of economic development in poor countries. The analysis draws on the most up-to-date data on
threatened species from 48 sub-Saharan African countries. Assuming that spatial autocorrelation is a typical problem
for biodiversity data, we use Maximum-likelihood estimators to account for spatial-autoregressiveness in the dependent
variable, as well as in the explanatory variables of the models. We find evidence that supports a decrease of
biodiversity loss, measured as the percent of threatened bird species, with increasing income per capita. The results
also reveal some species-level differences in the biodiversity-development relationship, since we find no significant
impact of economic development measured as per capita income on threatened mammal species. This analysis
contributes to the literature by partially challenging the paradigm of a strictly positive relationship between biodiversity
loss and economic growth in a developing countries context.