Agriculture and Environment: Rubber

Environmental Impacts of Production: Habitat Conversion

A consequence of creating rubber plantations is the clearing of natural forests for the establishment of monocrop plantations.

In addition, the timber is often stacked and burned.

This results in a loss of the vast majority of forest species including those that live in the soil, which are exposed directly to sun and heat as well as rainfall and cannot survive the fluctuating heat and moisture levels.

Soil exposure leads to erosion and the leaching of nutrients. Once rubber trees are planted, regrowth of any other vegetation is killed until the seeds in the soil are depleted or until the canopy is closed.

Huge losses to original biodiversity
Once rubber plantations are established they are recolonised by subsoil microorganisms as well as by small succulent and shrubby plants. While rubber plantations recreate some of the ecosystem functions of a natural forest, they harbour only a tiny proportion of the original biodiversity.

Large scale habitat conversion in China
The area of the most active conversion of natural habitat to rubber plantations recently has been in China where rubber is considered a strategic crop (one that is so important that a country does not want to depend on others for it). Unfortunately, rubber is a tropical crop, and China does not have very much land that is suited for rubber cultivation.

What is particularly unfortunate about this conversion is that much of China's land in tropical areas is quite hilly and subject to erosion. This leads to other environmental impacts, not only for China but also for those countries through which the Mekong River flows.

For example, soil erosion alone has large impacts on drinking water, aquatic life, and siltation. In addition, the stripping of natural habitat tends to accentuate runoff during the rainy season as the water is no longer absorbed. This can contribute to flooding.