Carbon Footprint and Carbon Stock Volume for Para Rubber Production in Southern Part of Thailand

Abstract

Para rubber product as it is one of the main exported products from Thailand. There are mostly planted areas in the southern and northeastern part of the country. This research emphasized on the assessment of carbon footprint and carbon stock from rubber trees. The comparison will be made between the production of latex and rubber cup lumps. The assessment was conducted from transportation, soil preparation, plantation, cultivations, rubber tappers and cut down the process. The study area in southern covered 13 provinces (excluding Songkhla province) was conducted on 740 farms with 9,126 Rai (1 Rai=1,600 m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ). The results showed that the average carbon footprint of latex and rubber cup lump produced in southern area was 0.77 and 0.81 kg CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2-eq</sub> /kg, respectively. For latex and rubber cup lumps, the major share of the GHGs emission was contributed by the cultivations and harvest processing follow by cut down. The total CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2-eq</sub> stock are 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years old rubber trees were 11,638.26, 17,288.94, 24,967.15, 29,805.35 and 32,292.98 kg CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2-eq</sub> /Rai, respectively. Therefore, rubber tree can reduce CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> emissions 4,592.09 - 19,480.97 kg CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> /Rai it depends on the product.