Ethical investors should look at the green credentials of the companies they support to protect endangered species as business ploughs through their fast disappearing natural habitats.
A new study has mapped the effect of consumption of goods has on the global register of at-risk species – and the news is not good for many that are at risk.
The main problems come from cutting timber and the world’s love of drinking coffee and cocoa.
These account for extra pressure on around 30% of under threat plants, animals and insects because of a growing recognition of that may nations have a bigger biodiversity footprint overseas rather than at home.
The information comes on the eve of the 2012 Rio+20 Earth Summit Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
For the first time, researchers have linked consumer consumption to threatened species to show a map of how business is ripping up vast tracts of unspoiled land.
“Our findings can be used to improve the regulation and product labelling of thousands of internationally traded products,” said Manfred Lenzen, of the University of Sydney, who led the project.
The study looked at more than 5 billion supply chains connecting consumers to over 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries – then this was checked against a global register of 25,000 vulnerable species.
“Until now these relationships have only been poorly understood. Our extraordinary number crunching, which took years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, lets us see these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time,” said Lenzen.
On average 35% of recorded threats can be linked to export-led production in countries where species are at risk, which rises to between 50% and 60% in rich biodiverse nations like Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Honduras.
More than 170 listed species are threatened by businesses with exports from mining, timber, coffee, and cocoa in Papua New Guinea, while farming exports from Indonesia affect 294 species, including rare tigers.
