Jones, J. P. G. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2022

Rubber needs to be included in deforestation-free commodity legislation

Natural rubber production uses increasing amounts of land in the tropics and is linked to deforestation. There is debate as to whether current legislative proposals to reduce the import of deforestation-linked commodities into the EU, US and the UK will include rubber. Globally, sustained growth in demand is chiefly driven by tyre production, linked to rising freight and passenger transport flows. Yields of natural rubber remain static, meaning increased plantation area will be required: 2.7 - 5.3 million ha of additional harvested area could be needed by 2030 to meet demand. In order to prevent further deforestation and associated biodiversity loss, millions of smallholder growers producing the majority of rubber globally need support to increase production from existing plantations and close yield gaps, without undermining long-term sustainability through soil or water degradation. Rubber should also be included in legislative proposals to reduce deforestation in supply chains to avoid undermining the impact of these ambitious initiatives on forest loss globally.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Insights from two decades of the Student Conference on Conservation Science

Conservation science is a crisis-oriented discipline focused on delivering robust answers to reducing human impacts on nature. To explore how the field might have changed during the past two decades, we analyzed 3,245 applications for oral presentations submitted to the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge, UK. SCCS has been running every year since 2000, aims for global representation by providing bursaries to early-career conservationists from lower-income countries, and has never had a thematic focus, beyond conservation in the broadest sense. We found that the majority of submissions to SCCS were based on primary biological data collection from local scale field studies in the tropics, contrary to established literature which highlights gaps in tropical research. Our results showed a small increase over time in submissions framed around how nature benefits people as well as a small increase in submissions integrating social science. Our findings also suggest that students and early-career conservationists could provide pathways to increased availability of data from the tropics and for addressing well-known biases in the published literature towards wealthier countries. We hope this research will motivate efforts to support student projects, ensuring data and results are published and made publicly available.

ecology↗