The map of colonial extraction and the map of biodiversity turn out to be the same map

Researchers from Trinity, the University of Bern, the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology and the Wyss Academy for Nature pooled data from 168 countries and reported in the journal People and Nature that the regions most targeted by colonial powers were generally those richest in biodiversity, and that this history has contributed to modern structures of poverty ^[1][2][3]. That finding lands directly on conservation budgets, because the same team reports that poorer, biodiversity-rich nations already shoulder a disproportionate burden of global conservation effort ^[4].

The assembled evidence spans World Bank poverty statistics, biodiversity records, governance indicators, colonial history and protected-area coverage ^[2] - five data domains rather than the single-variable correlations that usually carry this argument ^[5].

The causal ordering the authors propose is worth stating precisely: biodiversity did not cause poverty, but it did make a region more likely to be colonised, and colonisation shaped the poverty seen today ^[6]. Conor Waldock, an assistant professor in Trinity's School of Natural Sciences and a lead author, says tropical and subtropical regions were often prosperous relative to European countries in precolonial times, consistent with the expectation that species diversity supports prosperity through food, fibres and medicine ^[7][8]. According to Waldock, colonial powers then extracted plants and animals by force, enslaved people and took agricultural resources over centuries, until local economies were forcibly structured around exporting raw materials such as fibre, rubber, timber, pelts, dyes and spices ^[9].

The persistence mechanism is the part operators should read twice. Waldock argues that developed economies now process natural resources and sell them back to source countries at heavily inflated prices, an unequal exchange that feeds inequality ^[10]. He also argues that the institutions and governance systems originally built to extract resources were left in place after colonisation ended, then weakened and economically exploited through neoliberal policies such as structural adjustment programmes, with effects that appear to persist and drive poverty today ^[11]. Anna Samwel of the University of Bern adds that colonialism impoverished biodiversity-rich nations by promoting extraction and unfair trade, and by replacing Indigenous land stewardship with commercial exploitation aimed at Western profits ^[12].

The case studies show the pattern operating inside conservation itself. Central American cotton species diversity was essential to establishing cotton agriculture in North America, with diverse plant traits exploited by European industries using enslaved African labour, creating wealth in Europe while leaving former colonies dependent on raw-material exports ^[13]. In Tanzania, Eastern Arc Forest conservation projects restricted local farming and resource use while international conservation organisations and tourism interests benefited from managing protected land ^[14]. In Ethiopia's Simien Mountains, pastoralists were blamed for environmental damage and then displaced, reflecting conservation ideas that ignored local land-management knowledge and livelihoods ^[15].

What to watch is whether funders act on the authors' conclusion that conservation needs a fundamental rethink covering who makes decisions, who funds them and who benefits, given that global trade systematically shifts environmental costs onto poorer nations ^[16][17]. Watch also for the numbers: the account released with the study reports no effect sizes and does not quantify how colonial history performs against present-day governance indicators ^[18], so the ranking of the two remains the authors' interpretation until the model output is on the table.