Wealthier suburbs in
An international team, with researchers from
"You get more species in places where there are richer residents than poorer ones," explains co-author
"Biodiversity richness is one of
However,
"A form of environmental racism persists,"
This latest study adds to this body of evidence of environmental inequity.
She gives an example of informal settlements, which are characterised by few trees and ground cover. "Think of the cooling, water retention that people lose out on, the increase in dust generation [because there aren't plants to keep the soil in place]," she says. It is important to take the next mental step of what the lack of greenery and biodiversity means for people living in those places: "Yes, there's no greenery, but what is the next step - people don't have places to walk, they don't get the psychological benefits [of experiencing nature]. You think of all those benefits that they are robbed of," Anderson says. It's a "major environmental injustice", she says.
Biodiversity is a key component of the quality of life of city dwellers, but it is clearly not distributed equally across society, lead study author Prof
More than half of the world's population lives in cities, and the authors warn that "the degree of environmental injustice represented by the luxury effect may be amplified in the future, especially in arid regions".
While this study is a metastudy, which is an overview of available research, some of the authors previously found that South African birdlife was also susceptible to the luxury effect. Published in 2019 in Global Change Biology, the study used data from a citizen science programme, the
The researchers took the database and mapped it against 9km by 9km squares in urban areas to determine frequency and diversity of bird species, as well as the amount of land covered by buildings. They found that "species richness increased as income level increased", although it started declining again as areas became more built up.
"Within
This latest metastudy study, however, compared almost 100 studies like the bird one to test whether this effect was in fact real and, if so, what could be driving it.
The team found that water is at the heart of this phenomenon - something which is also a source of conflict in
Either way, water availability is something that city planners should keep in mind when planning cities or providing services, he says.
"The luxury effect is a bad thing," Amar says. "We should have equal access. Town planners need to better understand that pattern" and ensure that water resources, such as lakes or water features, are "not bunched up in one place, and are equally distributed."
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