Yong Enn Lun

School of Science and Technology,
Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

ABSTRACT. The objective of this paper is to expose some empirical evidence regarding the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation, as stated by the Environmental Kuznet Curve theory. The issue here concerns specifically one dimension of environmental problems, which is the endangered biodiversity in the context of heavily globalised phenomenon and economic development around the world. Particularly, several groups of endangered biodiversity including bird, fish, mammal, and plant species are focused to represent the biodiversity loss circumstance. The analysis involves the construction of one composite indicator of endangered biodiversity. Scatter plots and correlation tests are used to identify the current status of most countries in terms of biodiversity loss against the international trade. The analysis uses the recent data of 2012 of the biodiversity and four decades of trade data of 180 countries. The paper also suggests four possibilities in which successful conservation of the current global biodiversity ecosystem is possible, but under some challenging pressures.

KEYWORDS. Biodiversity degradation, economics, trade.

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