Rethinking Bamboo Text B3 Hainan 2000 PDF
Rethinking Bamboo Text B3 Hainan 2000 PDF
Rethinking Bamboo Text B3 Hainan 2000 PDF
M P Ranjan
Faculty of Industrial Design
National Institute of Design
Ahmedabad, India
This paper has been prepared at the invitation of GTZ/INBAR for the Sino-German
Forestry Cooperation-Hinan: Rehabilitation and Protection of Tropical Forests, Hinan
Provincial Forestry Bureau, Haiku, P.R.China for presentation at the GTZ/INBAR
Workshop on Bamboo and Rattan 2000 from 12 to 21 April 2000 at Hinan and Yunnan
Provinces of China. This paper is now reissued for the Bamboo Boards & Beyond workshop.
Introduction
This paper is divided in two parts the first is speculative and reflects on the emerging
roles of bamboo that can be reinforced and expanded upon in the spheres of utilisation
that have come to our recent attention.
The second part focuses on the status of bamboo research and utilisation in India and
plans that are put up to strengthen the utilisation of bamboo in a wide variety of sectors with
particular reference to the eastern and north-eastern regions of the country where
bamboo is abundantly grown and utilised over several years.
The title of this paper calls for a re-assessment of the use of bamboo in a wide variety of
areas some of which have been areas of focus in the past and some which would
certainly form a major part or take a major part our attention in the near future.
Sustainable development practices are called for in the promotion of the massive
exploitation of the worlds bamboo resources and several new breakthrough applications
are anticipated due to the increased research spend that is taking place around the
world on bamboo related research. This too needs to be regulated and mediated so that
the promises that bamboo holds out for the future are indeed realised in a manner that
is benign to the environment and beneficial to the local peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin
America who have nurtured this resource in all its bio-diversity over the past millennium.
Bamboo has had a glorious past and this can be seen and appreciated in the refined
utilisation patterns of the people of the traditional bamboo growing areas of Asia.
Bamboo is also a future material and needs to be handled with great care and
sensitivity to provide mankind with a truly sustainable natural resource that can be used
for a vast number of applications that have hitherto not been imagined.
The traditional uses include housing and building of fences, agricultural products, tools,
baskets and structures that are used for cattle management and fishing. Traditional
uses also include the use of various parts of bamboo for a variety of interesting
applications. Use of the mature culm and splits for structural applications and the tender
shoots for food, and the use of the leaf as a material for fodder and the use of the
various other parts such as branches and rhizomes for a variety of mechanical and
structural applications show the broad areas of application that have been traditional
and well established in many bamboo cultures of Asia.
Industrial uses of bamboo include the conversion of stems into pulp for paper and in the
production of viscose fibre and in the use of laminated splits in the production of
composite boards and related products. Lamination of handwoven mats into multi-ply
boards combine the craft and industrial processes providing employment to large
numbers of craftspersons in India and these new boards provide a sustainable
substitute for timber based natural wood and plywood products at a reasonable
economic and ecological cost.
Recent research in China has produced an excellent alcoholic beer beverage that uses
the leaves of the bamboo plant as the major production resource. This is a significant
new discovery and the market for these new products is growing very rapidly. New
initiatives in Japan show that bamboo based charcoal may be a major source for new
chemical substances for exotic applications of very high value and the charcoal
compares very favourably with natural coal and lignite for energy applications and
without the associated environmental impact since bamboo charcoal has been reported
to be a much better source of cooking fuel compared to wood fires used by the
economically weaker sections of the populations in Asia and Africa.
This idea is taking strong roots in the aggressive research that is now taking place in the
related fields of traditional medicine due to the economic importance that is now being
perceived for such traditional knowledge with the emergence of a new consciousness
for intellectual property rights through the globalisation of such ideas. Traditional
applications of bamboo in various parts of the world must be studied to discover the
significant properties of bamboo that are known only in a tacit manner to the traditional
communities that use them on a daily basis.
These new breakthroughs and discoveries that we can expect to see in the near future
with the sustained investment into a systematic process of discovery and research
raises many new questions and concerns that should be mediated particularly in the
context of the emerging globalisation of these knowledge resources and the intellectual
property issues that are associated with such a trend. What we are perhaps seeing
today is a veritable gold rush towards the systematic exploitation of the wonder grass
called bamboo in numerous ways that have not been seen in the past and at a scale
that is perhaps unprecedented.
Numerous organisations around the world are making massive investments in bamboo
research and these are in both the social and the commercial sectors of the economy.
Both forest based resources and farm based initiatives have been set in motion in the
recent years across a very wide distribution of ecological and cultural regions, each
driven by several pressing local needs or economic opportunities and each initiative is
supported by the economic and political visions of local and international leaders. There
are numerous such initiatives taking shape around the world where bamboo plays a
major role in shaping the development strategies. The Costa Rican housing project and
the laminated bamboo board industry of China are some recent success stories while
the paper and rayon industry in India have established practices for the exploitation of
bamboo on a massive scale in close collaboration with the local forest administrators.
While the traditional local users of the bamboo resources have embedded good
practices of utilisation into their models of resource maximisation, the same cannot be
said of the large industrial producers who have exploited the material on a large scale in
the past. There are several instances of unsustainable exploitation both in the industrial
and in the traditional sectors that teach us lessons that must be the guideing norm for
the future.
The exploding interest in bamboo as a future material for social and economic
development must be tempered with these lessons and those that have been gleaned
from the experiences of other agricultural and forest resources to ensure that bamboo is
a truly renewable material that can be put to the service of human use. The prospects
for the development of such a sustainable pattern is very high. This is dependent on our
being able to garner all the knowledge resources that are presently available and follow
it up with a sustained programme of well directed research that dovetail into a
wholesome programme of field action on many sectors and across many regions.
“The ancient Indian parable of the ‘Blind men and the Elephant’ applies to the role that
bamboo plays in our lives. The man holding the trunk sees the elephant as a huge
snake and the one touching the legs as a huge tree trunk. The ears seem to be a big
fan and the body a great wall and the tail a slender rope. Each part or attribute evokes a
different image and response. All of these are true, but is only part of the whole picture.
Bamboo is indeed many things to many people. This is particularly true of the lack of
appreciation that bamboo is a diverse group of plants from one tribe called Bambusae
available in 50 genera and in as many as 1200 different species. The physical,
mechanical, structural, chemical and other characteristics of each of these species vary
to a great extent and these need to be taken into consideration while planning particular
applications. Care should also be taken that the more popular species are not
developed at the cost of the other species since we now know that bio-diversity is a
desirable principle and that future promises new applications may justify the nurturing of
the less popular species as well. Besides the diversity provided by the species we also
need to look at the various parts of the bamboo plant and the range of applications that
these offer for each part and as a whole plant that can be fully utilised in a sensible
manner. Priorities will vary between user groups and this will call for a regulatory
process of collaboration between user groups that can be effectively mediated in an
internet enabled world provided a network is established for this purpose and a better
awareness is developed about the conflicts and issues at stake.
There is a need for the discovery and development of good practices in the cultivation
and exploitation of bamboo resources particularly for large scale uses such as the
industrial applications of paper, rayon, ply-boards, fibre-boards, charcoal and food items
such as bamboo shoots and bamboo beer produced on an industrial scale. Large
mono-cultures of one singe species are fraught with difficulties since bamboo has an
anomalous flowering behaviour that can disrupt an entire eco-system if adequate care is
not taken in maintaining the bio-diversity of a region. New research into bamboo will
surely show us many fascinating aspects of the wonder grass. This makes it all the
more critical that good practices of cultivation and propagation are critically needed to
be understood and practiced on a wide scale. Ever since it has been possible to
produce millions of bamboo plants in test tubes using the latest genetic manipulation
techniques, bamboo can be systematically farmed with a great deal of control on the
selection of the desired characteristics being exercised by the farmers. There is a need
for these bamboo enthusiasts to be sensitive to the principles of natural sustainability
that applies to all of agriculture and forestry practices.
Similar pressures can be anticipated where bamboo is being used on a massive scale
for other industrial applications. The stress on the natural bamboo resources due to
runaway demand in international markets will place several eco-systems under threat of
degradation if adequate steps are not taken to manage these resources with
sustainable practices. The pressures on local users and their own dependence on
bamboo will be strained and we need to rethink the models of industrial extraction for all
the high volume applications. Linking the local populations in Asia, Africa and Latin
America to such a resource base based on bamboo cultivation is not only possible but it
may also be a desirable alternative to the industrial contractor model for industrial
exploitation of the forest resources that have been practiced in many places.
Speculating about the future uses of bamboo resources we need not think only of timber
substitution but also see bamboo as an effective substitute for a number of other
mineral and chemical resources as well. Plastics, diesel, carbon and composites of
bamboo fibres may some day replace mined materials with processed materials based
on a sustainable natural resource such as bamboo. Bamboo will then bring a new think
to the value of nature and our dependence on it for sustenance.
What then should be the nature of a farm for growing bamboo? Will we see new ways of
cultivation that increase yields and that can produce materials that meet exacting
specifications? What are the priorities for these new application areas and how do local
people participate in these initiatives?
Some of these questions are being raised in India over the past few months and the
status of Bamboo in India has been changed substantially as a result of recent events.
In June 1999, on World Environment Day, The Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari
At the meeting convened by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in August 1999, in
collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and
INBAR in Delhi, a National Bamboo Committee, a multi-disciplinary task force has been
set up to review and advise this sector. The other Ministries that will be looking at
bamboo are the Ministry of Textiles that will focus on Handicrafts, the Ministry of
Industry at industrial applications such as laminated boards and paper, Ministry of Food
Processing into the needs of the fledgling bamboo shoot industry, and the Department
of Science and Technology (DST) will look at the research and development needs
through the chain of laboratories in the bamboo growing areas particularly in the
Northeastern States. The Ministry of Commerce will oversee the export development
and these will focus on handicrafts, manufactured products and processed food for
export markets. At the State Government level too a number of initiatives are under way.
The utilisation of bamboo for the paper industry has been declining as a percentage of
the total paper production although the total volume of bamboo used has expanded
over the past sixty years. In 1936 the consumption of bamboo by the paper industry had
reached 50 percent of the total production. Till the mid 1950’s the utilisation of bamboo
continued to rise in the face of supply constraints for wood and reached a peak of 74
percent of total production. In 1970 over 95 percent of the paper used wood and
bamboo with bamboo accounting for 56 percent in fibre weight.
Thereafter there has been a steady decline due to supply constraints on both wood and
bamboo and due to the development of non-wood based papers from agricultural
residues and changes in Government policies. The utilisation of bamboo in 1980 was 29
percent, in 1990 it was 27 percent and in 1995 it was 22 percent of the total production.
New paper mills that have been set up recently use recycled paper and imported pulp
for the entire quantity. This is in line with the pressures that are being exerted by
consumer activists and environmentalist for a reduction of wood and bamboo from our
forests and the corresponding changes in Government policies in this area.
There has been a very active debate in India about the need for good practices in the
extraction of natural resources from the forests and on the impact of such economic
activities on local peoples and the forest eco-systems and the wild life that is dependent
on it. Gadgil and Guha in their book “Ecology and Equity: the use and abuse of nature in
contemporary India” discuss the issues in depth and provide many lessons that can be
our guideing principles for the future. The bamboo mat board industry in Kerala and
Meghalaya on the other hand is based on the premise that the industrial exploitation of
References
Websites
1. <http://www.hindpaper.com/>
Home page of the Hindustan Paper Corporation, a major user of bamboo in India at
some of its mills. Other details are provided under the URl’s listed below.
http://www.hindpaper.com/nppc.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/cpm.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/hnl.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/environment.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/forest.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/profile.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/locations.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/npm.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/mnpm.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/hnl.htm
http://www.hindpaper.com/cpm.htm
2. <http://www.ramanewsprint.com/>
Home page of Rama Newsprints Ltd a new paper mill that uses only recycled paper and
imported pulp.
3. <http://www.earthisland.org/paper/bamboo2.html>
Bamboo Paper: Not Forest-Friendly by Aaron G. Lehmer
4. <http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/WWT_Biotechnology.html>
Other issues relating to the sustainable uses of bamboo are discussed at the URL’s
listed below. West Wind Technology is a commercial provider of Biotechnology services
for bamboo propagation.
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/bamboo_paper.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/bamboo_food.htm
lhttp://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Products.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Wood_Products.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Charcoal.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Biomass.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Bioremediation.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Composites.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/wwt.html
http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/WWT_Biotechnology.html