GreenFlip

Bamboo can play a role in disasters and relief in the following ways:

1. Bamboo’s ability to withstand vibrations help in mitigating disasters. Buildings made of bamboo survive earthquakes while concrete structures collapse. Latin American houses built with bamboo have survived earthquakes.

 2. Bamboo’s soil binding properties helps in preventing land degradation, soil erosion and land slides. It preserves watersheds. Underground roots can spread over a 100 square metre area. When rains fail bamboo rhizomes increase soil moisture. This can help in drought proofing.

 3. Bamboo plantation reduce the impact of winds and hence cyclone intensity.

In many parts of the world, through old practices and recent innovations, bamboo has been used for the purpose of construction, especially as a medium to cope with disasters like landslides and earthquakes. In Limon, Costa Rica, only the bamboo houses from the National Bamboo Project withstood the 1992 earthquake that reached 7.6 on the Richter scale. Properly constructed bamboo framed homes have demonstrated excellent wind strength. Flexible and lightweight bamboo enables structures to survive in earthquakes of Costa Rica as well as Columbia.

In the Latin American and Caribbean countries, due to increasing causalities due to earthquakes, in the continent, bamboo as a construction material is being promoted.

The aftermath of destruction in Costa Rica helped to focus worldwide attention on the potential of bamboo housing in disaster relief. A similar disaster struck the Cafetero Axis region of Colombia in January 1999. The Colombian Bamboo Society was quick to react to the urgent need for housing by earthquake victims. Society co-founders, architect Simon Velez and botanist Ximena Londono, worked together to design and build bamboo prototype housing for the victims. Their efforts also publicized the post-earthquake engineering studies that showed that housing which used traditional bamboo lattice work suffered far less damage than those employing “modern” concrete methods.

It started from an earthquake in Columbia where a watchtower of a local Coffee Park, in Pijao designed by Simon Velez and built by his partner Marcelo Villegas survived. Eighteen meters tall, and seven meter free overhang, it remained unmoved by the earthquake. The municipality of Pijao, with 8,000 inhabitants, located next to the epicenter only counted three casualties. Nearly all-traditional houses, which still stood, as if nothing had happened, were made from bamboo.

 Concrete bridges are dangerous and expensive in regions prone to landslides. Bamboo again comes to the rescue here. Some of the earliest of all suspension bridges were ones constructed with cables woven from bamboo strips. Throughout their long history, the Chinese have built suspension bridges to span fast-flowing rivers and deep ravines, and the Incas also designed hanging bamboo bridges.

Bamboo architecture in South America is born as an intelligent constructive reaction after seismic events. This is the case of the Peruvian “Quincha” , constructive system that is used since the XVII century in Lima, and in the rest of Peru and Ecuador and the Colombian “Bahareque”, very used from the XIX th centuryin the coffee growing area, west of Bogotá, in the highest seismical area of this country,. Both building systems resisted very well all the earthquakes that happened along their history. Costa Rica, without any bamboo tradition, created the Bamboo Foundation ca. 1980, and made a lot of quarters with bamboo houses that withstand very well the tremors caused by earthquakes. In Tucumán, Argentina, bamboo is used as a building material in rural areas.

 Bamboo offers the best properties for the seismic-resistant constructions. Because of its light weight, high resistance and great flexibility, Bamboo turns out to be particularly adequate to withstand earthquakes. In fact, even though they are covered with “ferrocemento” (iron-cement), Bamboo houses weigh almost 40% less than the traditional ones, being thus the seismic load reduced in the same proportion. Bamboo high resistance is comparable to that of the best wood. With its more efficient natural design, its flexibility provides it with a great capacity for seismic energy dissipation.

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Bamboo is an important means for generating income and improving the nutritional status of over 2 billion poor and disadvantaged people. It also provides the resource base for expanding Small and Medium Enterprise sector, providing employment and income generating opportunities to alleviate poverty. As such it constitutes an excellent entry point for local poverty alleviation initiatives.

Bamboo benefits rural-urban communities because it, (a) lends itself to agricultural approaches, (b) can be grown on non-agricultural land with annual harvests, (c) is easily processed by simple tools because it splits linearly, (d) bamboo based industrial development benefits the communities through its demand for human resources for growing, harvesting, transportation and processing of bamboo, (e) bamboo growth also works for land protection, soil quality improvements including improved water holding capacity, higher water capture and recharge benefiting agriculture and food security.

Bamboo remains an untapped avenue of economic growth in India. Its premise is that if the bamboo industry is pulled from its current status of a peripheral industry and pushed centre stage to being a prominent and profitable one it can successfully reverse economic downturns and bring an about-turn in the economic fortunes of the country. This would be particularly true for the Central Gondwana regions (CGR, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Western Uttar Pradesh) of the country where the resource is abundant and could be sustainably harvested in the years to come because of its amazingly quick propagation.

With its inherent properties, bamboo combines the best of forestry and agriculture. It holds the promise of rejuvenating watersheds and degraded lands, fortifying the country’s ecological security. What would distinguish growth in this sector is that it would directly benefit large sections of the rural poor, as they could be involved in the plantations, harvesting and primary processing bamboo units. The long-term relationship with this sector would help the economically disadvantaged sections escape the debilitating poverty trap. The development of the bamboo sector could follow in the footsteps of the dairy sector whose miraculous makeover has enabled 10.5 million farmer families earn a supplementary income of Rs 1,800 per month. This industry’s growth model has been successfully replicated in 22 states in the country and it spells hope for the bamboo sector.

The blueprint envisaged in meticulous detail here for the bamboo industry projects a growth in the sector from Rs 65 billion in 2003-2007 to Rs 240 billion in 2013-2017; a growth that would could even overtake that of the biggest bamboo economy of the world, China. The overarching model also projects an employment opportunity of 1.67 million in 2003-2007 that would climb sharply to 11 million in 2017. For example, the NER, whose economies have been trailing behind, the estimates are the bamboo sector can take their gross domestic product from Rs 230 billion in 2003 to Rs 290 billion in 2007 that would translate into a growth rate of 5 per cent. The bamboo industry would have a potential of employing a total of 1.88 million people in this region by 2017.

                        KEY CONCLUSIONS

§         The global market for bamboo products USD 7 billion + per annum*

§         Bamboo based enterprises can prove to be the key in rural economic development and mass employment creation

§         Governments and local administration must provide sustained and consistent support if the sector is to develop

§         The future of global bamboo markets looks strong, driven by growing demand for sustainable wood-replacement products

§         The commercialization of recent technological innovations has created significant new market opportunities for floor tiles, laminated furniture, panels and activated carbon.

§         New, higher value added processing greatly increases the potential for poor economic development compared to traditional lower value enterprises. For example, every tonne of bamboo used for producing bamboo boards has 5 times more pro-poor financial impact than if used for paper.

§         Markets in US, EU, Australia and Japan present significant opportunities for several high value products

§         The competitiveness of future bamboo enterprises will be largely driven by ‘value added utilization’ of the entire bamboo plant. 

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*Bamboo shoots, furniture, handicrafts, chopsticks, blinds, tiles, panels, charcoal and activated carbon. The value for unprocessed bamboo used in construction industry is excluded.

INTRODUCTION

The market for bamboo and bamboo products is growing and over the past years has been spearheaded by a rapid increase in bamboo production and/or trade coming out of China and other parts of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Latin America. Evidence exists that under the right conditions bamboo can be a leading sector for rural industrialization and large-scale poverty reduction. Technical innovations in processing, particularly standardization and product innovation have enabled bamboo products to compete in mainstream wood-product markets such as laminated flooring, composite boards and paper and pulp. Other promising bamboo products do not compete in the timber products markets, such as bamboo shoots and bamboo handicrafts, and these sub-sectors are subject to unique factors affecting growth. It is estimated that the current value of global trade in bamboo products is worth 7bn USD, and is expected to rise at 17bn USD by 2017 assuming mid-level growth. The current market size as against the projected market size by 2017 for some of the products would be as follows . In view of the global market trends in bamboo usage coupled with the fact that India has the largest recorded bamboo resources globally; the need to prioritize this sector is of great significance. In India, 13.47 million tons of bamboo is harvested annually of which 11.7 million tons is utilised industrially in paper mills, as scaffolding or fencing, for internal consumption in bamboo-growing households, handicrafts and miscellaneous items like incense-sticks, ladders, ice-cream sticks, agricultural implements, etc. But no reliable estimates of quantities are available for any of these items. Due to the abundance of the natural product, small holders harvest the bamboo from the edges of their farms and their surroundings; there is negligible large-scale commercial cultivation of bamboo in India. The annual market for value added bamboo in India is estimated at approx. 1.0bn USD in 2004 which is expected to grow up to 5.8bn USD by 2015. To achieve this there is a need for consistent supply of processed bamboo, development of industry, channeling of raw material into manufacturing system and an assurance of steady market . Trade regulations for bamboo are usually the same as those for wood both at international and regional levels. Despite bamboo’s inherent advantages for livelihood and environmental sustainability, only China, India and Vietnam, have favorable policies towards bamboo at present. Further, the customs codes that are used for the collection of trade statistics do not specifically define bamboo products within their categories and it is necessary to interpolate to derive best guess estimates. INBAR has however produced a new series of codes that will be implemented by the World Customs Organization from 2007–8, and this should enable more accurate understanding of the trade. 

OVERVIEW

The world bamboo market is currently worth USD 7 Billion/year, of which China has USD 5.5 Billion. The largest markets are handicraft (USD 3 Billion), bamboo shoots (USD 1.5 Billion) and traditional furniture (USD 1.1 Billion). Traditional markets cover handicrafts, blinds, bamboo shoots, chopsticks and traditional bamboo furniture, which count for 95% of the market. Emerging bamboo markets are wood substitutes such as flooring, panels and non-traditional furniture. The growth of the global market is expected to grow to USD 15-20 Billion/year in 2017. Non-traditional markets are expected to claim 45% of the total bamboo market. 

 CURRENT SIZE OF SELECTED MARKETS

The world bamboo market is currently worth USD 7 Billion/year, of which China has USD 5.5 Billion. The largest markets are handicraft (USD 3 Billion), bamboo shoots (USD 1.5 Billion), traditional furniture (USD 1.1 Billion); the remainder consists of window blinds, chopsticks, panels, charcoal etc. In 1992, France, Germany and the Netherlands were the major markets for bamboo, collectively accounting for 53% of the world’s total imports (NAFRI, NUoL, SNV. 2007). Traditional markets cover handicrafts, blinds, bamboo shoots, chopsticks and traditional bamboo furniture, which count for 95% of the market to date. New market products include modern/laminated furniture, flooring and panels cover the remainder 5% of the bamboo sector.

FUTURE MARKET SIZES

Emerging bamboo markets, particularly wood substitutes, have been pioneered by Asian producers and include flooring, panels and non-traditional furniture. These represent the largest growth opportunities for bamboo. Strong world (and Chinese) demand and Chinese’s productive capacity and exports have produced a structural change in the wood industries. Increased restrictions of certified timber supply, growing environmental awareness, and competitiveness in lower-cost countries create a positive market outlook for bamboo. As there is still a high degree of uncertainty over bamboo market growth, especially in new markets, two bamboo market scenarios are presented in Figure 9 below, Figure 9: Global Bamboo Scenarios (Source: OHK, 2006) World Bamboo Market Scenario 1: Existing market – zero growth scenario (Worst case), based on current market size only assuming zero growth in global markets or bamboo penetration. It is believed that this scenario is unlikely to occur due to the current dynamic expansion of the sector. World Bamboo Market Scenario 2: Mid-level future scenario, based on the prevailing forecasts for ‘global market’ growth and the mid–level scenario for bamboo penetration growth). The growth of the global market is expected to grow to USD 15-20 Billion/year in 2017. Of this it is expected that traditional products will grow, but not as fast as the non-traditional market which will expect to claim 45% of the total bamboo market. 

MARKET ATTRACTIVENESS

The market attractiveness of each industry is not only dependent on the size of the market, but also how accessible the market is and how profitable it may be for producers. For the current purposes, accessibility is a measure of how easily bamboo products can penetrate into their ‘global markets’. Accessibility is the result of a combination of factors including: price/performance competitiveness, trade conditions, standards and regulations and buyer attitudes. For each of the selected markets, we have used qualitative information and industry feedback to assess the ‘ease of access’ and indicative ‘profitability’. In combination with estimates of market size, this provides an initial assessment of the demand side attractiveness of the different markets, as illustrated below. 

INDUSTRY OUTLOOK

There are significant macro-economic changes driving the wood-based markets at present: • Strong worldwide demand for materials alongside an established and growing environmental awareness is forcing changes in the way wood based products are produced and marketed. • Production and exports in China are changing the business context for US and European suppliers who are forced to either build their own factories in lower-cost countries or go out of business. • A global shortage of certified renewable wood and shortage of all wood kinds in Asia is opening up opportunities for substitute products i.e. bamboo. • Growth in interest in sources of environmentally friendly energy such as biomass will have an effect on wood-based industries and potentially bamboo. Key issues expressed in interviews with industry participants from a range of bamboo / wood related industries included: Macro-level issues • Rise in demand for certified timber products and chain of custody documentation • Shortage of certified timber products and chain of custody documentation • Biggest issue apart from sourcing wood remains quality assurance Perceptions of bamboo • General positive disposition towards bamboo as material, if some reservations about “the hype” • Perception of bamboo as a suitable product for use in furniture and flooring but not construction based products in export markets • Perception of bamboo as uncompetitive for use in wood panels, especially in high income economies.

Source: Mayank, M (2008) Techno-Economic Feasibility Study for Setting up Bamboo SMEs, NMBA, India