Abstract
South and Southeast Asia is by far the most populous region in Asia, with the greatest number of threatened species. Changes in habitat are a major contributor to biodiversity loss and are more common as a result of land-use changes. As a result, the goal of this study is to use negative binomial regression models to investigate habitat change as one of the important drivers of biodiversity loss in South and Southeast Asian countries from 2013 to 2018. According to the negative binomial estimates, the findings for the habitat change measures are quantitatively similar for the impacts of agricultural land and arable land on biodiversity threats. Agricultural and arable land both have a positive impact on biodiversity loss. We found that, contrary to our expectations, the forest area appears to have an unexpected direct influence on the number of threatened species. A higher number of threatened species is associated with rising per capita income, human population and a low level of corruption control. Finally, the empirical findings are consistent across taxonomic groups, habitat change measures and Poisson-based specifications. Some policy implications that could mitigate biodiversity loss include educating and promoting good governance among the population and increase the conservation effort to sustain green area and national forest parks in each country.
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Data availability
The information in this paper comes from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (various versions), the Worldwide Governance Indicators database and the World Development Indicator (WDI) database. On reasonable request, it is available from the corresponding author.
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The Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Johor Kampus Segamat funded this research through the Bestari Research Grant Phase 1/2021 (Grant Number: 600-UiTMCJ (PJIA.5/2)).
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Jen-Eem Chen: introduction and review of the literature. Thian-Hee Yiew: data collection and estimation method. Yan-Ling Tan: abstract, introduction, results and discussion, as well as paper conclusion. Muzafar Shah Habibullah: editing and proofreading. The final manuscript was read and approved by all authors.
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Tan, YL., Chen, JE., Yiew, TH. et al. Habitat change and biodiversity loss in South and Southeast Asian countries. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 63260–63276 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20054-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20054-y