Interbasin trade worsens the state of freshwater fish biodiversity in China
Human economic activities severely threaten freshwater fish biodiversity in different river basins. Trade makes the impact more mysterious and complex and confounds local efforts to protect freshwater biodiversity. To investigate the relationship between trade and freshwater fishes, we developed a river-basin economic transaction model that is applied to mainland China, home to 9% of the world's freshwater fish species. Here, we show that interbasin trade induced by final demand contributes 74% of the threats to China's freshwater fish biodiversity. Economically developed river basins (e.g., the Huaihe River) are the main beneficiaries of interbasin trade at the cost of biodiversity deterioration in economically underdeveloped river basins (e.g., the upper Pearl River), especially when trade occurs between distant basins. Our findings highlight the significance of the shift in governance from administrative divisions to river basins and control measures in different stages of economic supply chains to mitigate freshwater fish biodiversity threats.
Authors
- Dequn Zhou
- Lixiao Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7936-9171)
- Donglan Zha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7437-0416)
- Arunima Malik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4630-9869)
- Yuan Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9790-4529)
- Xiao Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2045-8214)
- Qunwei Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3878-2832)
- Manfred Lenzen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0828-5288)
- Meili Feng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2305-6934)
- Mingyue Pang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3563-4938)
- Enming Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0401-4608)
- Zhifu Mi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8106-0694)
- Yu Han
- Xuejun Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2424-3977)
- Changbo Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1267-7962)
- Pengpeng Zhang
- Yafei Wang
Institutions
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- University of Nottingham Ningbo China (CN)
- Central University of Finance and Economics (CN)
- Anhui Agricultural University (CN)
- Chongqing University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Institute of Hydrobiology (CN)
- China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (CN)
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (CN)
- Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics (CN)
- University College London (GB)
- Hebei Normal University (CN)
- Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- iScience
- Published
- 2024-10-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111121
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Fish Ecology and Management Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.69
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Government of Jiangsu Province
- Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China
- Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China
- Major Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities of Jiangsu Province