As humanity’s demand on natural resources is increasingly exceeding Earth’s biological rate of regeneration, environmental deterioration such as greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, ocean acidification and groundwater depletion is accelerating. As a result, the capacity of ecosystems to renew biomass, herein referred to as ‘biocapacity’, is becoming the material bottleneck for the human economy. Yet, economic development theory and practice continue to underplay the importance of natural resources, most notably biological ones. We analysed the unequal exposure of national economies to biocapacity constraints. We found that a growing number of people live in countries with both biocapacity deficits and below-average income. Low income thwarts these economies’ ability to compete for needed resources on the global market. By 2017, 72% of humanity lived in such countries. This trend not only erodes their possibilities for maintaining progress but also eliminates their chances for eradicating poverty, a situation we call an ‘ecological poverty trap’.

随着人类对自然资源的需求越来越超过地球的生物再生速度，环境恶化，例如大气中温室气体的积累，海洋酸化和地下水的消耗正在加速。结果，生态系统更新生物质的能力（本文称为“生物能力”）正在成为人类经济的物质瓶颈。然而，经济发展理论和实践继续低估自然资源的重要性，尤其是生物资源。我们分析了国民经济受到生物承载力限制的不平等风险。我们发现，越来越多的人生活在生物承载力不足和收入低于平均水平的国家。低收入阻碍了这些经济体竞争全球市场所需资源的能力。到2017年，72％的人类生活在这些国家。这种趋势不仅侵蚀了他们保持进步的可能性，而且消除了他们消除贫困的机会，这种情况我们称为“生态贫困陷阱”。