The clearing of forests for growing rubber “has been substantially underestimated” in figures used to develop policy on deforestation, new research finds.
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The study, published in Nature, uses satellite data to produce high-resolution maps of rubber-driven forest loss in south-east Asia since 1993.
It finds that more than 4m hectares of tropical forests have been lost to rubber plantations in south-east Asia over the last three decades – at least two-to-three times more than previously thought. More than 1m ha of plantations have been established in key biodiversity areas.
The greatest forest losses occurred in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, the research says. In Cambodia, more than 40 per cent of rubber plantations were associated with deforestation, of which 19 per cent was in key biodiversity areas.
This news brief is based on reporting published by Eco-Business on 2023-10-19. The original report is linked below.
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