Invasive species have an enormous global impact, with international trade being the leading pathway for their introduction. Current multinational trade deals under negotiation will dramatically change trading partnerships and pathways. These changes have considerable potential to influence biological invasions and global biodiversity. Using a database of 47 328 interceptions spanning 10 years, we demonstrate how development and governance socio-economic indicators of trading partners can predict exotic species interceptions. For import pathways associated with vegetable material, a significantly higher risk of exotic species interceptions was associated with countries that are poorly regulated, have more forest cover and have surprisingly low corruption. Corruption and indicators such as political stability or adherence to rule of law were important in vehicle or timber import pathways. These results will be of considerable value to policy makers, primarily by shifting quarantine procedures to focus on countries of high risk based on their socio-economic status. Further, using New Zealand as an example, we demonstrate how a ninefold reduction in incursions could be achieved if socio-economic indicators were used to select trade partners. International trade deals that ignore governance and development indicators may facilitate introductions and biodiversity loss. Development and governance within countries clearly have biodiversity implications beyond borders.
Interception data for "Corruption, development and governance indicators predict invasive species risk from trade"
This data file contains three sheets - "Vegetable Pathway", "Timber Pathway" and "Vehicle Pathway".
Details on pathways are described in the ESM of the main manuscript.
Governance indicator scores were obtained from the World Bank World Governance Indicators (WGI) database (www.govindicators.org)
Development indicator scores were obtained from the World Bank Development Indicators database (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator)
The meanings of the columns within each sheet are as follows:
Country: Country of commodity origin
Year: Year in which interception of non-native species occurred
Total trade: Total trade in the selected pathway. Pathways are described in the ESM of the main manuscript.
Total detections: Total detections in the defined pathway each year
G_voice: Governance indicator of Voice and Accountability
G_stability: Governance indicator of Political Stability and Freedom from Violence
G_effective: Governance indicator of Government Effectivenss
G_regulator: Governance indicator of Regulatory Quality
G_law: Governance indicator of Rule of Law
G_corruption: Governance indicator of Control of Corruption
D_agri: Development indicator of Agricultural land (% of land area)
D_export: Development indicator of Exports of goods and services (% of GDP)
D_forest: Development indicator of Forest area (% of forest area)
D_GDP: Development indicator of Gross domestic product
These Governance and Development indicator scores are further described in Table 1 of the main manuscript.
Ministry for Primary Industries
New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industries provided access to the data on an ‘as is’ basis. MPI does not warrant as to the quality, accuracy or completeness of the data. MPI or any original data creator does not accept liability for any damages, whether direct or indirect, resulting from the use of the data. The data were obtained from the Data Analysis Team's (Analysis and Profiling Group, Border Standards Directorate, MAFBNZ) "Interception Database" and the MAF Quantum Database. Data includes only border interceptions.
FULL DATASET.xlsx