From primary forests to rubber plantations: A huge ecological loss

The production and consumption of rubber occupy a pivotal position in the global economy, with the manufacture of more than 1 billion tires per year globally now relying on natural rubber.1 According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the world export price of rubber has quintupled from 2001 to 2021. Robust market demand and sharp price inflation have greatly fueled the expansion of rubber plantations. Reports from the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) indicated that global natural rubber production has increased 22-fold during the last 24 years (from 0.68 Mt in 2000 to 15.14 Mt in 2023), with over 90% of this output originating from Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Recently, Wang et al.1 used the unique phenological characteristics of rubber plantations to map, for the first time, the distribution of rubber forests across Southeast Asia in 2021. Their findings revealed that the area of deforestation for rubber plantations was at least two to three times greater than current policy data estimates. More alarmingly, over a quarter (approximately 1 million hectares) of rubber plantations were located in key biodiversity areas, which originally possessed exceptionally high ecological value. These data show that the expansion of rubber plantations not only leads to the destruction of primary forests but also results in associated losses of crucial ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, soil nutrients, water resources, and biodiversity, which, in turn, generates a cascading effect threatening the ecological balance regionally and globally.2 Wang et al.1 noted that rubber has received less attention than other commodities, sparking a widespread debate about its policy controls. There is an urgent need for robust evidence to guide policy actions to prevent rubber from being prematurely excluded from key policies. Wang et al.’s1 work offers the potential to identify regions where conversion of primary forests to rubber plantations has occurred. However, key questions about “where, how, and how great are the ecological losses” remain unanswered. To this end, we identified the regions where primary forests were transformed into rubber forests between 2001 and 2021, based on the distribution data of primary forests in 2001 and rubber forests in 2021.1,3 From the perspective of ecosystem services, we quantified the ecological loss caused by this transformation and further explored how to minimize the damage to forest ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots while meeting rubber production demands, thereby achieving synergistic benefits between environmental and production objectives.