For those Diwali-dizzy, who thought that prosperity is when one takes a well-earned nap on the oars, think again, when it comes to the enterprising rubber farmer.
Just when the commodity fetches a Rs 100 per kilo price feast, RPS (rubber producing societies) are keen to make money jumping on the Kyoto Protocol green bandwagon. The consumer industry of rubber, hardpressed by input prices, is already sharpening their knives against green house gases (GHGs). Very quietly, a tyre major had recently notched up about Rs 3 crore trading its carbon credits (CERs – Certified Emission Reductions).
The Rubber Board, in consultation with New Delhi-based TERI (Tata Energy Research Institute), has readied three carbon credit projects for stakeholders in rubber.
?Two are before the MoEF (ministry of environment and forest) and a clearance is expected in 60 days,? says James Jacob, director, Rubber Research Institute of India, Rubber Board.
If this is put before the UN Framework Convention for Climate Control (which takes the Kyoto Protocol forward) and cleared, the green practioners could soon be entitled to globally tradable CERs. Many of them have not even heard of carbon trading. One project is the biomass gasifier for sheet-drying. Farmers, through the string of RPS, have been motivated to use waste as fuel in drying rubber through bio-methanation process. This waste would, otherwise, release gases, with a global warming potential 23 times that of CO2.
?This is not a tough shift to make,? according to Eapen Varghese, a rubber planter. Energy-saving has always been on our agenda, he says. Two is diesel or electric fuel replacement in rubber factories. This is to be achieved through a process innovation that chemically decomposes the waste, in an oxygen-free incineration. 20 TSR (technically specified rubber) factories in Kerala have changed to this new process and are clamouring for their entitled CERs. At the same time, there are 4800 manufacturing units in the country, making nearly 50,000 rubber-based products.
The third project is where owners of the existing 60 million hectre of rubber plantations in the country are pulling a long face. Natural rubber farms have a very high carbon sequestration potential and ‘avoided deforestation’ could be eligible for some CERs. But then, there is a cut-off date of 2001. The Rubber Board has proposed 60,000 additional acre of rubber planting in North Eastern regions like Tripura and Assam within 10 years.