A new study has found a direct link between colonial-era exploitation of natural resources and the poverty that persists today in many biodiversity-rich countries. The research examined data from 168 nations and was recently published in the journal People and Nature.
The research team came from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Bern, the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, and the Wyss Academy for Nature. They analyzed World Bank poverty statistics, biodiversity records, governance indicators, colonial history, and protected-area coverage to build their findings.
According to a report by Phys.org, the central finding was that the regions most targeted by colonial powers were generally those richest in biodiversity. That targeting, the researchers argue, created structures of poverty that have not gone away.
Conor Waldock, an assistant professor in Trinity's School of Natural Sciences and a lead author of the study, pointed to what life looked like before European colonization.
"We know that in precolonial times, tropical and subtropical regions were often prosperous compared with European countries," he said. "This pattern aligns with the concept that biological diversity should support prosperity through the many benefits of nature, such as food, fibers and medicine."
That prosperity made these regions targets. "But colonial powers violently extracted plants and animals, enslaved people, and stole agricultural resources from these biodiverse regions for centuries. This eventually led to local economies being forcibly structured around the export of raw natural resources such as fiber, rubber, timber, pelts, dyes and spices," Waldock said.
The inequality did not end when colonial rule did. "Now, developed economies process and then sell natural resources back to their source countries at a heavily inflated price, creating unequal exchange in resources and feeding inequality," Waldock added.
He also pointed to what was left behind. "The institutions and governance systems initially built to exploit natural resources and left behind after colonization ended were weakened and economically exploited through neoliberal economic policies such as structural adjustment programs—and these effects appear to persist and drive poverty to this day."
Anna Samwel of the University of Bern added another dimension to the analysis. "Colonialism played a key role in the impoverishment of nations rich in biodiversity by promoting resource extraction and unfair trade practices, and by replacing Indigenous land stewardship with aggressive commercial exploitation aimed at Western profits," she said.
The researchers were careful to draw a clear line. Biodiversity itself did not cause poverty. But having rich biodiversity made a region more likely to be colonized, and colonization shaped the economic structures that drive poverty today.
The study also found that poorer, biodiversity-rich nations now shoulder a disproportionate burden of global conservation efforts, adding yet another layer to what the researchers describe as an ongoing and unequal exchange between wealthy and developing nations.
