The clearing of forests for growing rubber “has been substantially underestimated” in figures used to develop policy on deforestation, new research finds.
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% of rubber plantations were associated with deforestation, of which 19% was in key biodiversity areas.
The study has important implications for both domestic and global policy, one author tells Carbon Brief, with rubber causing “more deforestation than is assumed in data that underpinned policy in both the EU and the G7”.
However, they caution that rubber – a substantial and sustainable source of income for smallholder farmers with significant climate benefits – should not be “demonised” because of deforestation data.
Use, drivers and estimates
Used by the Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica for generations before it was “discovered” by colonial regimes and introduced to other tropical regions, rubber is one of the most important crops that emerged from the rainforest.
Natural rubber is made by “tapping” a sticky sap called latex by making incisions in the bark of certain types of trees – predominantly the Hevea brasiliensis, a deciduous tree native to the Amazon basin that is now common across the tropics. The latex collected in cups is then processed to make it less brittle and treated with heat for durability.
Today, south-east Asia accounts for 90% of the global rubber production, with the rest coming from South and central America and, more recently, west and central Africa. It is closely tied to tropical deforestation, which is largely driven by consumption in global markets.
Around 85% of all natural rubber is produced by smallholder farmers on plantations that are often less than 5ha in size. This makes them hard to capture in satellite imagery and national crop statistics.
It is also difficult to distinguish rubber trees in satellite images because they appear quite similar to the forests they are grown adjacent to. Heavy cloud cover in rainforest regions further complicates the picture.
The study authors use high-resolution satellite imagery to map smallholder plantations, using composites across multiple years to tackle the challenges of cloud cover. They then zeroed in on a distinctive seasonal signature for rubber, based on when plantations shed and regain their leaves, to distinguish rubber plantations from evergreen and deciduous tropical forests.
According to the study, mature rubber plantations occupied an area of 14.2m ha in south-east Asia in 2021, with 70% of the production located in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Rubber-related deforestation was most widespread in Indonesia, followed by Thailand and Malaysia. The study also found that 40% of all rubber plantations in Cambodia were associated with deforestation – the highest proportion of any country studied – with 19% of this area located in areas of key biodiversity value.
The chart below shows the cumulative area of rubber-related deforestation in individual countries in south-east Asia over 2001-16. The orange bars represent the amount of deforestation that occurred in key biodiversity areas and the yellow bars show the amount of deforestation elsewhere. The circles represent the percentage of rubber production that was associated with deforestation within this period.
The figures from this study for forest loss in Cambodia are “several hundredfold” higher than previous estimates relied on to inform EU, G7 and UK policy, according to the study.
Prof Antje Ahrends, head of genetics and conservation at the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh and one of the authors of the research, warns that the study’s estimates – while significantly higher than most – are still understated. She tells Carbon Brief:
“You have to set a threshold on the imagery: if you set the threshold too low, then you are at risk of including all sorts of areas that are already heavily degraded, and if you set the threshold too high, then you miss lots of deforestation. So we actually opted for a very conservative threshold.”
Prof Erik Meijaard, an ecologist associated with the University of Kent who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the study helps fill a “massive knowledge gap”. He says:
“It’s great that the authors of this paper have mapped rubber, because unless we know where these crops are growing, we have absolutely no idea what their impacts have been on the environment.”
Meijaard, who is the director of scientific consultancy Borneo Futures and currently co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Oil Crops Task Force, adds:
“We’ve been trained to think of a particular crop having certain environmental or social characteristics: like palm oil is bad because it drives tropical deforestation, but tropical deforestation is only part of the story.
“In west Africa, where palm oil traditionally comes from, it is produced and consumed locally and is a part of local cuisine and culture, which is a very different context from palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia produced for global markets.
“It really isn’t about the crop, like rubber in this case, but about the system in which different commodities are produced, traded and consumed and the length of the value chain associated with them.”
Prices and plantations
A number of complex and interlinked factors influence the timing of rubber plantation expansion, from national policies and subsidies to prices for other crops. In some countries, such as Cambodia and Vietnam, expansion is significantly linked to global rubber prices.
The chart below shows the total area of rubber-related deforestation in south-east Asian countries between 1993 and 2016, alongside global rubber prices, indicated by the black line. The colours show the fraction of overall deforestation that occurred in individual countries: Laos (pink), Cambodia (light green), Myanmar (red), China (orange), Malaysia (gold), Vietnam (yellow), Indonesia (light blue) and Thailand (blue).
The researchers point out that following the rubber price crash in 2011, land that was deforested during the early 2000s rubber boom may have been converted to other lucrative land uses. These lands are not included in the study’s estimates.
They warn that although prices are currently low, deforestation for rubber has been volatile since the crash.
Additionally, the study finds that in some countries, palm oil has expanded into areas where rubber was traditionally grown, with new rubber plantations then being established elsewhere, driving further deforestation.
Traceability, penalties and opportunities
Unprocessed rubber has a long shelf life and can be transported and stored for long periods of time, especially when prices are low.
This proves especially tricky to account for in policies that include traceability requirements, such as the EU’s new deforestation regulation. Under these rules, companies have to provide precise geographical information locating the farmland where their products were grown or raised.
Rubber was included in the final list of commodities targeted by the EU legislation, even though the European Commission’s own impact assessment report for the law stated that it “account[ed] for the smallest fraction of embodied deforestation” and its inclusion would have “limited return” in curbing deforestation. (See: Carbon Brief’s detailed explainer on the EU deforestation regulation.)
Ahrends tells Carbon Brief:
“Because rubber is non-perishable, the typical top-down approach of tracing things for rubber won’t work. It stops being traceable because you don’t know how the rubber got to the processing facility.
“I think that challenge is actually better addressed from the bottom up, so that you work with smallholder cooperatives who jointly negotiate a price and can collectively say that the rubber comes from this region, versus vying with millions of smallholders competing for an already very low rubber price.”
She adds that it is “absolutely” critical that the EU deforestation regulators distinguish between farmers renewing existing rubber plantations and new deforestation of natural forest for new plantations.
The intent of the study is “not to demonise, but encourage smallholder production”, while also ensuring rubber does not lead to continued deforestation, Ahrends says. She adds:
“Rubber is a really good income source for smallholders, if it can be managed properly. It can store up to 250 tonnes of carbon per hectare. If you have the choice between a field of pineapple and field of rubber, rubber is also environmentally the better choice: less pesticide, more carbon storage, better longevity, you can intercrop it, form agroforests you could never do with pineapple.
“Natural rubber is also much better than synthetic rubber, which is produced from, essentially, fossil fuels.”
She stresses the importance of educating farmers to minimise deforestation and form cooperatives to use fewer pesticides and not “overtap” trees, so that plantations do not need to be replaced so quickly. Rubber trees typically have an economic lifetime of 20 to 30 years.
Meijaard says it is important to look at how governments decide to allocate land for agricultural production and how to design land use optimally to deliver the highest environmental opportunities and retain natural areas. He tells Carbon Brief:
“I hope that the global discussion around this paper is not going to be ‘my god, we have another devastating crop that’s wiping out Indonesian rainforest’. That’s not particularly useful. The discussion I hope we have and should all be involved in is: how do you produce the commodities that the world needs and requires most optimally, from a nutritional, social and an environmental perspective?”
The post Rubber drives ‘at least twice’ as much deforestation as previously thought appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Rubber drives ‘at least twice’ as much deforestation as previously thought
Özgür Özel is the leader of Turkey’s main opposition “New Party” and a member of parliament from Manisa.
The world is running out of time to deliver on the Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report concludes that the chance of keeping warming below 1.5C without overshooting it is gone. Even if every country delivers its current national pledges, the planet is heading for about 2.6C of warming this century.
This is the backdrop as governments and their leaders gather in Antalya for COP31, ten years after the Paris Agreement took effect. Turkey lies in the Mediterranean, one of the regions most exposed to climate change, and hosting the summit is a real opportunity.
It is also a responsibility, and that responsibility begins at home. The world does not lack targets. What it has lacked – almost everywhere – is delivery. If Antalya is remembered for anything, it should be for shifting the focus from what countries promise to what they actually do.
For many people in Turkey, the climate crisis is already part of daily life. In 2021, forests in Manavgat, a district of Antalya, burned for more than a week. Last year, wildfires forced more than 50,000 people from their homes around the western coast city of Izmir. This October, Istanbul had its heaviest rainfall in more than 80 years, with the floods killing at least eight people.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
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Measurable outcomes
Two weeks of climate negotiations cannot deliver everything that is needed to resolve the crisis, but COP31 can push for a few things that can be measured. The first is a voluntary fossil-fuel transition roadmap, with national milestones for 2030 and 2035 reported in the same format every year.
The second is a stronger commitment to protecting forests, with progress tracked over time. The third is yearly reporting on progress towards the agreed $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance by 2035, backed by a financial roadmap.
On adaptation, the indicators agreed in Belém should become funded national plans. By COP32, we should be able to see how many countries have an adaptation plan and the financial commitment behind each one.
Regional resilience partnership
The summit also has an unusual shape. Turkey hosts, Australia leads the negotiations, and the Pacific island nations play a central role. Climate diplomacy now sits at the centre of energy security, trade and development, and Turkey, which bridges developed and developing economies, is well placed to help build consensus between them. The lasting value of its presidency will depend on the practical partnerships it leaves behind.
One such partnership could connect two very different regions. On a map, the Mediterranean and the Pacific seem to have little in common, but their problems look similar: eroding coastlines, salt creeping into aquifers, failing harvests, fishing towns with fewer fish.
Turkey and Australia could launch a Mediterranean–Pacific Climate Resilience Partnership, linking coastal cities, scientists, institutions including development banks and island governments. It does not need a new bureaucracy. It can start with a few projects: shared satellite data and early-warning systems, better coastal flood defences, and trials of water-saving farming in the communities most at risk. What matters is visible results on the ground, not a ceremony.
Turkey’s track record
Turkey does have progress to point to. It has committed to net zero by 2053, and its solar and wind capacity has grown fast. The sunshine, the wind and the industrial base are all there. But the long-term direction of the energy mix is still unclear.
Turkey also signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26, pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. With four years left, COP31 is a chance to show how that promise will be kept.
COP30 roadmap says faster use of existing tools can halt forest loss by 2030
And while the summit celebrates zero waste, Turkey took in more than half a million tons of European plastic waste last year, much of it bound for Mersin and Adana. On November 21, the day after COP31 closes, an EU ban on plastic-waste exports to non-OECD countries takes effect. Turkey, as an OECD member, is exempt. That should worry us more than it seems to.
None of this will carry much weight unless Turkey’s own record holds up. A leadership at odds with its own environment and its own citizens will struggle to inspire global confidence in its commitment to protecting the planet.
Threat to local climate action
Cities are where adaptation happens. Water, flood protection, waste and urban planning fall largely to municipalities. That is why the imprisonment and removal of more than 50 elected opposition mayors, including the mayor of Istanbul, matter for environment and climate policy, as well as for democracy.
When local leadership is disrupted, investment plans stall and work on flood defences and water supplies loses continuity. As a result, local governments are left paralysed.
Comment: From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom
Inconsistent policymaking when it comes to the environment and climate deepens the problem in Turkey as it does in other countries. A few practical steps would make a real difference.
Set out a gradual, well-planned energy transition. Stop new construction in streambeds and drinking-water basins and put zoning maps online. Inspect every imported plastic shipment and cap total imports. Hold public hearings on environmental impact assessments before permits are issued, not after. And publish an independently audited climate scorecard each year covering emissions, renewables capacity, forest loss and adaptation spending.
This could set an example beyond Turkey. Many emerging economies are trying to cut emissions while protecting jobs and keeping industry competitive. Digital tools and artificial intelligence are already available to help forecast wildfire risk, reduce grid losses and track water use.
With the 1.5C limit now set to be breached, Antalya’s success will be measured by the greenhouse gases avoided, the investments delivered and the forests still standing in the years that follow. It is our responsibility to watch closely and see whether those commitments are delivered, transparently and in line with international standards.
The post Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.
Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action
As oil companies pull out of Argentina’s oil heartland in the Patagonian province of Chubut, workers and communities are struggling to secure their future, with little say in the decisions being made about it.
“The impacted are fragmented, the exploiters organised,” said José Glinski, a member of parliament from the province.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, where Argentina’s oil industry began in 1907, those words carry particular weight. For nearly 120 years, oil has shaped the city’s economy and that of Chubut province, which helped power Argentina for decades. Now the companies that built their fortunes there are shifting their investments elsewhere, threatening an economy that has depended on oil for generations.
Argentina’s national oil company, YPF, whose roots lie in Comodoro Rivadavia, is selling off its mature oilfields in the region to concentrate investment in the shale oil and gas reserves of Vaca Muerta, further north. According to Glinski, around 10,000 direct jobs have gone in Chubut, and unemployment has climbed from 2% to 10% in a single year.
“And this while all remaining companies have kept extremely high levels of profit,” he said.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Glinski blames government policy as much as the companies. “Companies are choosing to leave and the government lets them do so, while weakening tax and environmental regulations, leaving the city without the necessary income to organise the transition.”
Nobody has yet worked out who will clean up the old fields and more than 6,000 wells, look after the workers who remain, or pay for whatever comes next.
Comodoro Rivadavia is not alone. From Mejillones and Tocopilla in Chile to La Guajira in Colombia and Appalachia in the United States, from Scotland to Mpumalanga in South Africa and East Kalimantan in Indonesia, places built around fossil fuels for generations face some version of the same problem. As investment moves elsewhere, plans to protect workers, support communities and repair damaged land often lag far behind, if they exist at all.
Building an economy beyond fossil fuels
In Comodoro, as locals call the city, the community has not been passively waiting for oil to run out.
“We have looked into multiple alternatives for the territory, including building on geothermal capacity, an agricultural programme that could reinforce food security and focus on cultures that are not too water dependent, and exploring also aquaculture built on local species,” explained Ruben Zárate, who heads Comodoro Conocimiento, a public agency created by the municipality to develop economic opportunities. “The only alternative is economic diversification.”
But having ideas is one thing. Finding the money and securing the political support to put them into practice is another. In many countries, decisions that shape a region’s economy are made in the capital or in company boardrooms, and local authorities have little say, and few resources, when a major employer pulls out.
Glinski points to deals struck at the national level that leave communities without a meaningful say in decisions affecting their future.
“Some of the barriers relate to the absence of regulation of private actors which have negotiated conditions at the national level that prevent provinces or territories from capturing benefits that could be useful to fund the transition,” he said. “Comodoro had no voice in these deals.”
One example is Argentina’s Large Investment Incentive Regime, known as RIGI, which offers substantial tax benefits and regulatory guarantees to major investors. Argentina’s Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN) has warned that this regime could also give large projects preferential access to water and energy at the expense of local communities and businesses, making it harder for regions to diversify their economies.
At root, it’s a question of power: who controls the money and the decisions, and whether the people who kept these industries running for generations have any control over what comes next.
“Comodoro, like most territories that developed around fossil fuels, is heavily dependent. Everyone knew the oil business would end, but none planned for it,” said Antonella Risso, a climate expert and community member. “Comodoro deserves a bright future. Its people have the capacity to chart a future for its next hundred years – a real Just Transition”.
What COP31 could do
Last year in Belém, governments agreed to develop a Just Transition Mechanism. At COP31 in Antalya they will negotiate how it should work, and civil society is pushing for a strong Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM) that can help channel resources for action on the ground.
Camila Mercure, a climate policy officer with FARN and a coordinator of CAN’s Just Transition working group, said, “For a city like Comodoro Rivadavia, the BAM could mean support to develop diversification plans, assess viable alternatives, and access public, grant-based finance to put them into practice.”
“Workers and communities must have a meaningful role in shaping these plans, building on local knowledge and priorities. The aim should be to create decent livelihoods beyond fossil fuels and avoid alternatives that reproduce the same economic dependence, inequalities and environmental harm,” she said.
Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance
The BAM could also put regions in touch with each other. Officials in Patagonia, northern Chile, Mpumalanga or East Kalimantan are wrestling with many of the same questions, and sharing what has worked would spare them from starting from scratch.
Then there are the companies. Fossil fuel producers should not be able to walk away from their workers, their environmental obligations and the towns that depended on them. The BAM could help regions share experiences and develop ways to hold companies accountable, ensuring they plan ahead and pay their fair share of the transition costs.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, the transition has already begun, without the community’s consent and with little support. COP31 is a chance to help places like it plan ahead, before the last company leaves rather than after.
The post When the oil companies leave, who pays? appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/11/05/when-the-oil-companies-leave-who-pays/