Demand for rubber threatens forests in Asia

Demand for natural rubber fuelled by the tyre industry is threatening protected forests and their endangered species in Southeast Asia, a new study has warned.
The study predicts that up to 21 million acres of additional rubber plantations will be required to meet demand by 2024.
But expansion on this scale will have 'catastrophic' biodiversity impacts, with globally threatened unique species and ecosystems all put under threat, researchers said.
"The tyre industry consumes 70 per cent of all natural rubber grown, and rising demand for vehicle and aeroplane tyres is behind the recent expansion of plantations. But the impact of this is a loss of tropical biodiversity," lead researcher Eleanor Warren-Thomas, from University of East Anglia (UEA)'s School of Environmental Sciences, said.

"We predict that between 10.6 and 21 million acres of new plantations will be required to meet projected demand by 2024. This will threaten significant areas of Asian forest, including many protected areas," said Warren-Thomas.
There has been growing concern that switching land use to rubber cultivation can negatively impact the soil, water availability, biodiversity, and even people's livelihoods.

"But this is the first review of the effects on biodiversity and endangered species, and to estimate the future scale of the problem in terms of land area," said Warren-Thomas.
The study focused on four biodiversity hotspots in which rubber plantations are expanding - Sundaland (Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali), Indo-Burma (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, most of Myanmar and Thailand, and parts of Southwest China, including Xishuangbanna and Hainan Island), Wallacea (Indonesian islands east of Bali and Borneo but west of New Guinea, plus Timor Leste) and the Philippines.

"Rubber can thrive across a wide range of climate and soil conditions across Southeast Asia, and could replace a whole range of forest types containing large numbers of globally threatened and unique species," said Warren-Thomas.
"Protected areas have already been lost to rubber plantations. For example, more than 70 per cent of the 185,329 acres Snoul Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia was cleared for rubber between 2009 and 2013," Warren-Thomas said.
"Macaques and gibbons are known to disappear completely from forests which have been converted to rubber, and our review shows that numbers of bird, bat and beetle species can decline by up to 75 per cent," said Warren-Thomas.

Conversion to rubber monoculture also has a knock on effect for freshwater species because fertilisers and pesticides run off into rivers and streams.
In Laos, local people have reported dramatic declines in fish, crabs, shrimps, shellfish, turtles and stream bank vegetation. In Xishuangbanna, China, well water was found to be contaminated, researchers said.
"These findings show that rubber expansion could substantially exacerbate the extinction crisis in Southeast Asia," Warren-Thomas added.