| Bamboo - A Secured Livelihood Option Vijay Chaturvedi vchaturvedi@devalt.orgA Common Feng Shui Belief According to Feng Shui experts, bamboo being one of the hardiest plant is symbolic of good health and wealth. They believe three stalks attract happiness, five attract wealth, seven get you good health and twenty-one stalks offer very powerful all-purpose blessings. The Feng Shui belief is not just a mythological or ancient proverbial statement; if we deconstruct the thought, we find that Bamboo is a material that could be utilized in many ways and can connect people to nature as a resource substance to "live on" and also to earn a "decent livelihood". For centuries, bamboo has been used for various purposes - from crafts to shelter. It has also been used in Vedic and Chinese medicines. The powdered hardened secretion from bamboo has been used internally to treat asthma and cough. In China, ingredients from the roots of the black bamboo help treat kidney diseases. Roots and leaves have also been used to treat venereal diseases as well as cancer. Bamboo sap is said to reduce fever and its ash cures prickly heat. Current research point to bamboo’s potential in terms of a number of medicinal uses. Integrally involved in Asian culture and the arts over centuries, bamboo is a mystical plant that is a symbol of strength, flexibility, tenacity, endurance and compromise. Judicious use and placement of bamboo could lend an exotic oriental atmosphere to a landscape design and its various other applications can definitely accentuate our day-to-day life. Bamboo also accumulates a considerable quantity of biomass in a short time, with a low rotation period of two to five years. It sequesters atmospheric carbon faster than many other fast growing trees. Bamboo plantations are known to conserve the topsoil. Greater use of bamboo and its products as wood alternatives can help preserve tropical forests and curtail the rapid decline of forest areas. The biomass production of bamboo depends on its species, site quality, climate and terrain. The figures vary between 50 and 100 tonnes per hectare, comprising of culm biomass - 60 to 70 per cent, branches - 10 to 15 per cent and foliage - 15 to 20 per cent. A bamboo plantation is able to capture as much as 17 metric tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. This is due to the rapid growth of bamboo. With good cultivation practices, an annual crop of 30 metric tonnes air-dried bamboo per hectare per year is possible. The Resource Material to Live on A single bamboo clump can produce up to 15 kilometers of usable pole (up to 30 cm in diameter) in its lifetime. Bamboo is the most diverse group of plants in the grass family, and the most primitive sub-family. A woody culm, complex branching, a generally robust rhizome system and infrequent flowering distinguish it. It has a tropical and subtropical (cosmopolitan) distribution, reaching elevations as high as 4,000 metres in the Himalayas and parts of China. It is very adaptable, with some species being deciduous and others evergreen. The taxonomy of the bamboo remains poorly understood, though the general consensus seems to be that bamboo numbers between 60 and 90 genera with 1,100 to 1,500 species. Described as the ‘wood of the poor’ (India), ‘friend of the people’ (China) and ‘brother’ (Vietnam), bamboo is a wonder plant that grows over wide areas of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Millions of people depend on this plant for their livelihoods. It has become so much a part of the culture and memory of societies that the existence of a Bamboo Age has not been ruled out. Use of Bamboo in food and cooking goes far back in history. Exports of bamboo shoots from Taiwan alone amount to $50 million (US). Apart from traditional uses, bamboo has many new applications as a substitute for fast depleting wood and as an alternative to more expensive materials. Modern paper industry has expanded to such an extent that 2.2 million tonnes of bamboo are used in India for this purpose. Bamboo furniture is an expanding business. In the Philippines, exports rose manifolds. Bamboo’s potential for checking soil erosion and for road embankment stabilization are now becoming known. It is equally important for providing fast vegetative cover to deforested areas. Bamboo’s role in the construction field is equally substantial. Hundreds of millions of people live in houses made from bamboo. It provides pillars, walls, window frames, rafters, room separators, ceilings and roofs. In Borneo and in the Naga Hills of India, large communal houses of 100 feet in length have been built of bamboo. Throughout rural Asia, it is used for building bridges, from the sophisticated technology of suspension bridges to the simpler pontoon bridges. Bamboo scaffoldings are found throughout Asia, and they are employed on the high rise structures of Tokyo and Hong Kong. Bamboo is also used for musical instruments of all three types: percussion or hammer instruments, wind instruments, and stringed instruments. In Java, 20 different musical instruments have been fashioned of bamboo. Cave people toying with a hollow bamboo stem supposedly have invented the flute. Bamboo Applications Bamboo as resource material, can be used and applied in many areas, making it a very suitable natural resource providing many applications and commercial viability for sustainability of sector based activity to generate various livelihood options; some of them are:
Bamboo and Livelihood There has been a growing awareness around the world in recent years that development In many parts of the tropical world, the rural poor are completely dependent on bamboo for their shelter and every-day utilities. As a result, they have built up extensive local knowledge in terms of utilizing bamboo.
Product development is often much localized; people and technological interventions have found ideal solutions at many localities; could also be replicated in other areas. The economic rate of return, from spreading knowledge about bamboo crops and applying it as livelihood options, is very high. For example, the export income of China from bamboo products has increased seven-fold in the last ten years due to the emphasis on research and development. New products, like paneling and flooring, have recently been developed and have found ready acceptance in global markets.
Yet, in recent years, bamboo has been treated as an "orphan crop". New information generation has been much higher for individual tree crops such as pine and spruce as compared to that of bamboo. Therefore, information dissemination and sensitization on bamboo and its benefits should be speeded up at all levels. In India, which is the second largest producer of bamboo, we can inter-weave many livelihood initiatives around this wonderful grass. Only one essential element - "Willpower" - is required to connect bamboo with the lives of our masses. Such an effort could definitely secure livelihoods for communities at a large scale and sustain it for a long span of time. q
The author is a consultant on livelihoods with Development Alternatives. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
based on bamboo is an effective way to improve the lives of marginalized and rural people. These plants are the natural vehicles for development because rural people generally can have adequate access to these crops; they can be grown or harvested in forest margins, agro-forestry situations or on community land. They require only a modest capital investment and generate a steady off-farm income.