50 Tyre Asia April/May 2018
Time for change
in the rubber
industry?
O
n May 6th I’ll be
travelling to Colombo,
Sri Lanka to sit down
with some of the world’s
biggest tyre brands at the World
Rubber Summit, and discuss
the urgent question of how they
can best tackle the issue that is
unsustainable natural rubber.
The major tyre companies will
also be there. These include
industry leaders Michelin,
Goodyear and Bridgestone, who
have been making moves to
tackle some of the issues around
unsustainably sourced rubber, by
proposing a sustainable rubber
platform.
These companies are driving
this initiative through the Tire
Industry Project (TIP), which
sits under the auspices of the
World Business Council on
Sustainable Development. The
aim of the platform is to identify
best practices for the responsible
sourcing of natural rubber and to
maximise company efforts around
this common goal.Why is it so important to put
this platform in place? Despite
industrial rubber expansion’s
recent devastating impacts on
indigenous communities and
forests, natural rubber is one of
the few commodities without any
regulation or globally binding
standards.When I first started working
at Global Witness six years
ago, nobody was talking about
sustainable rubber.We were the first organisation
to expose the significant harm
across the Mekong region in the
wake of rapid rubber expansion.
Our reports documented human
rights abuses carried out by state
forces as part of land seizures,
and rampant illegal logging and
destruction of intact forests at
a time when Cambodia suffered
one of the highest rates of
deforestation in the world.The slump in global rubber
prices has seen a slow-down in
expansion but the threats still
continue: only recently it was
reported that industrial rubber
plantations are encroaching on
biologically-diverse ecosystems
and a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in Cameroon.The last few years has seen
some progress: following long
discussions with Global Witness
and other NGOs, several of the
major tyre companies now have
policies related to sourcing
sustainable natural rubber, which
address protecting indigenous
land rights and protecting forests
and biodiversity. They have also
discussed how to best work with
smallholders to improve yields to
prevent the damaging expansion
of industrial scale plantations.Global Witness has also worked
with the Chinese government to
help develop guidelines for rubber
companies operating overseas –
although voluntary, they remain
the strongest standard for rubber
yet. Of course, the proof willBy Ali Hines*
RUBBER
Ali Hines