Abstrakt
The scale and magnitude of damage to biodiversity resulting from the recent sharp rise in trade volume will probably take decades to realize. Exports worldwide increased by 119% between 1990 and 2011, notably from 'megadiverse' countries such as China, Brazil, India and Indonesia.
These countries are also major exporters of commodities such as biofuel, which has a huge detrimental impact on tropical and subtropical biodiversity. The real threat to biodiversity is underestimated by analysing only globally threatened species, because these are largely outnumbered by regionally threatened species.
Both of these considerations need to be included in attempts to quantify biodiversity damage from international trade.