CLIMATE CHANGE, SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS IN MALAYSIA

Malaysia is recognized as one of the mega biodiversity countries of the world. However, Malaysia’s biodiversity hotspot experiencing a more pronounce biodiversity loss. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to explore the link between climate change, socio-economic factors and biodiversity loss in Malaysia from 1990 to 2016, with a special focus on different climate change indicators namely rainfall, temperature and carbon dioxide (CO[Formula: see text] emissions. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, this study provides evidence on long-run relation between each of the indicators of climate change and biodiversity loss. The core threats to biodiversity are growing demand for agricultural land, rapid population, elevated temperature, higher CO2 emissions and rainfall reduction. Interestingly, the biodiversity loss-income nexus is also supportive of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis; with biodiversity threats increasing with income, beyond a certain level of income, a rise in income reduces the loss of biodiversity. The findings are essential for future studies with a special consideration to reduce the losses of biodiversity.