Legacy of colonial biodiversity exploitation explains poverty in biodiversity-rich countries – new research

Posted on: 19 August 2026

The research team, from Trinity, University of Bern, Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, and the Wyss Academy for Nature, assessed datasets from 168 countries, which included World Bank poverty statistics, biodiversity records, governance indicators, colonial history, and protected-area coverage.

The headline finding was that the regions most targeted by colonial powers were generally those richest in biodiversity, which has contributed to the modern structures of poverty.

Conor Waldock, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, is a lead author of the interdisciplinary research team who recently published the landmark work in the peer-reviewed journal People and Nature ((https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70349)).

He said: “We know that in pre-colonial times, tropical and sub-tropical regions were often prosperous compared with European countries. This pattern aligns with the concept that biological diversity should support prosperity through the many benefits of nature such as food, fibres and medicine.”

“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 forcibly structured around the export ofraw natural resources such as fibre, rubber, timber, pelts, dyes and spices. 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.”

“The institutions and governance systems, initially built to exploit natural resources, were left behind after colonisation ended were weakened and economically exploited through neoliberal economic policies like structural adjustment programmes — and these effects appear to persist to drive poverty to this day.”

Anna Samwel, University of Bern, added: “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.”

In other words, biodiversity didn't cause poverty. But it did make a region more likely to be colonised, and colonisation drove the structure of poverty we see today.

And to make matters worse the researchers also found that the poorer, biodiversity-rich nations shoulder a disproportionate burden of global conservation efforts.

Case study examples

Some practical examples that illustrate how colonial legacies continue to negatively impact biodiversity-rich countries include:

• The diversity of species rich Cotton in central America was essential to establish it’s agriculture into North America, the diverse plant traits were exploited by European industries using enslaved African labour, creating wealth in Europe while leaving former colonies dependent on raw-material exports
• Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Forest conservation projects restricted local farming and resource use while international conservation organisations and tourism interests benefited economically from protected land management
• In Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains, pastoralists were blamed for environmental damage and then displaced, reflecting colonial conservation ideas that ignored local land-management knowledge and livelihoods 

What are the potential impacts of this research?

This work shows that the colonial interlinkage between biological diversity and poverty must be addressed in global policy initiatives to avoid reinforcing values which slow progress towards a more sustainable planet. Ultimately, it implores that conservation needs a fundamental rethink.

Prof. Waldock added: “This work underlines that we need to change who makes conservation decisions, who funds them, and who benefits. Global trade systematically shifts environmental costs onto poorer nations, so telling these same countries that their path out of poverty lies in conserving their nature, without acknowledging or addressing their history, risks repeating old patterns under a new name.”

“Life on earth is under increasing pressure from habitat destruction, over-exploitation and climate change. To address the ongoing biodiversity crisis, world governments have agreed to protect 30% of the world’s oceans and land area by 2030, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Surprisingly, many of the world’s poorest nations already protect more far than 30% of their land, often excluding people that depend on the land, and are often still the focus on Western conservation projects - whereas wealthy countries rarely apply the same conservation rules in their landscapes.”

“These agreements sit alongside broader United Nations sustainable development commitments, which aim to tackle biodiversity loss and global poverty at the same time, but they often operate on the naive assumption that protecting nature and improving human wellbeing go hand in hand.”

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