Biodiversity and languages are threatened worldwide. The IPBES Global Assessment estimates around 1 Mio. species at risk of extinction and the same holds for around 50% of languages. As nature and humans are closely intertwined we decided to look at the spatial patterns of where biocultural diversity (species and languages) are threatened and if there are common drivers pushing both towards extinction.
In our latest study in the journal People and Nature we found:
- Hotspots of threatened biocultural diversity (species and languages) are found particularly on islands in Oceania and East Asia, such as New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan.
- Hotspots of animal endangerment are also found in other (sub-)tropical island nations such as Madagascar, Haiti and Mauritius.
- Threatened languages are more concentrated in the Americas, southern Africa and Australia.
- Beyond the expected current causes of the loss of biocultural diversity, our models showed that European colonialism has left a lasting impact on the threat to languages and species.
- The longer a region was occupied by one or more former European Empires the higher the threat level to both biological and linguistic diversity.
- These long legacy effects can be translated to the current times where globalization poses similar large-scale interventions in cultural and environmental systems with potential long-term consequences.
Publication:
Lenzner B, Baumann A, Norder S, Essl F, Fellner HA (2026) Legacy effects of European colonialism on hotspots of biocultural diversity threat. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70308.
