Interbasin trade worsens the state of freshwater fish biodiversity in China

Changbo Wang; E Zhang; Yafei Wang; Yuan Chang; Pengpeng Zhang; Xiao Chen; Mingyue Pang; Han Yu; Qunwei Wang; Lixiao Zhang; Dequn Zhou; Manfred Lenzen; Arunima Malik; Donglan Zha; Xuejun Zhang; Meili Feng; Zhifu Mi

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111121

Interbasin trade worsens the state of freshwater fish biodiversity in China

iScience. 2024 Oct 9;27(11):111121. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111121. eCollection 2024 Nov 15.

Authors

Changbo Wang^{1

2}, E Zhang³, Yafei Wang⁴, Yuan Chang⁵, Pengpeng Zhang⁶, Xiao Chen⁷, Mingyue Pang⁸, Han Yu⁹, Qunwei Wang^{1

2}, Lixiao Zhang¹⁰, Dequn Zhou^{1

2}, Manfred Lenzen¹¹, Arunima Malik¹¹, Donglan Zha^{1

2}, Xuejun Zhang¹², Meili Feng¹³, Zhifu Mi¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Economics and Management & Research Center for Soft Energy Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China.
² Laboratory of Digital Intelligence Management and Low-carbon Operations for Manufacturing System, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China.
³ Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, Hubei Province, P.R. China.
⁴ School of Statistics and Institute of National Accounts, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
⁵ School of Management Science and Engineering, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China.
⁶ School of Geographical Sciences, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China.
⁷ College of Animal Science & Technology, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China.
⁸ Key Laboratory of Three Gorges Reservoir Region's Eco-Environment, Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China.
⁹ Department of Natural Geography, Resources and Environment, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economic, Lanzhou 730101, China.
¹⁰ State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
¹¹ ISA, School of Physics A28, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
¹² China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China.
¹³ School of Geographical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo 315100, China.
¹⁴ The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London WC1E7HB, UK.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: aquatic biology; aquatic science; economics; environmental analysis; environmental resource; environmental science.