Governance, wealth, and scientific capacity all affect a country’s ability to deal with biodiversity issues. This study analyzes how developing countries often lack the scientific capacity to study their biodiversity. Another correlation established in this paper argues that biodiverse developing countries in Africa have a trend of low governance and high wealth. The nexus between biodiversity and the institutional factors will help illustrate how the financial insecurities suffered by developing countries trickle into environmental impacts.

To study the relationship between these variables, the authors created five indices to measure each factor in relation to its country. This paper defines biodiversity as the number of species on land in a country and leaves marine biodiversity as an afterthought. After measuring each variable through an index, the indices were all plotted against each other on graphs to calculate Pearson’s coefficient for each one. The data analysis determined that biodiversity correlates positively with scientific capacity and wealth (although the correlation with wealth is insignificant), and negatively with governance, just as explained earlier. Both the unit of observation and the unit of analysis were countries because the indices reflected measurements of certain countries and examining countries still analyzed the results. The conclusion details that the indices yielded very complicated answers; despite the discovery of some correlations, the implications of the cause are too vague to define. Improving the scale resolution or changing the makeup of the indices would improve the analysis in replications of this study. Including marine species in the definition of biodiversity would also improve the study because a lot of countries with well-managed fisheries have higher incomes. Since this paper seeks to find the connection between wealth and biodiversity, marine biodiversity would fit incorporate more aspects of the economy into the research.