Challenges and opportunities for sustainable rubber in Myanmar

Key points

• Smallholder rubber production in southern Myanmar has alleviated rural poverty, while large-scale plantation concessions in the north have led to land expropriation and limited livelihood options for rural people.
• Policies should support smallholder rubber production over large-scale models, while addressing the economic challenges that smallholders face, such as low quality and quantity of latex production.
• All forms of rubber production require regulation to ensure that land use rights of rural people are not infringed upon, forests are not cleared to make way for rubber plantations and the use of agrochemicals is limited.
• A diversity of subsistence and cash crops should be planted - at the landscape level and in plots using agroforestry - to retain higher levels of biodiversity and protect against price crashes.

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