Is bamboo an answer to deforestation ?

Photo credit: IPS

Bamboo nursery in Africa. There is debate over whether commercially-grown bamboo could help reverse the effects of deforestation and land degradation that has spread harm across the African continent. Credit: EcoPlanet Bamboo

Bamboo – An Answer to Deforestation or Not in Africa?

Bamboo can play a role in reversing ecosystem degradation

By Jeffrey Moyo

Deforestation is haunting the African continent as industrial growth paves over public commons and puts more hectares into private hands.

Phyllostachys nigra, drought-tolerant bamboo – http://www.caribbean-plants.com/shop/image/cache/data/phyllostachys-nigra-800×535.jpg

According to the Environmental News Network, a web-based resource, Africa loses forest cover equal to the size of Switzerland every year, or approximately 41 000 square kilometres.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is also on record as saying the African continent loses over four million hectares (9.9 million acres) of natural forest annually, which is twice the world’s average deforestation rate. And deforestation, according to UNEP, accounts for at least one-fifth of all carbon emissions globally.

Phyllostachys nigr stand – http://www.louisvillegardencenter.net/_ccLib/image/plants/DETA-404.jpg

The dangerous pace of deforestation has triggered a market-based solution using bamboo, a fast-growing woody grass that grows chiefly in the tropics.

“If grown in the right way, and under the right sustainable management system, in certain areas, bamboo can play a role in reversing ecosystem degradation” – Troy Wiseman, CEO of EcoPlanet Bamboo

“The idea of bamboo plantations is a good one, but it triggers fear of widespread starvation as poor Africans may be lured into this venture for money and start ditching food crops” – Terry Mutsvanga, Zimbabwean human rights activist

Containers with Phyllostachys nigra – http://srivisweswarahitechnursery.com/wgc_media/photos/Phyllostachys%20nigra.JPG

EcoPlanet Bamboo, a multinational company, has been expanding its operations in Africa while it promotes the industrialisation of bamboo as an environmentally attractive alternative fibre for timber manufacturing industries that currently rely on the harvesting of natural forests for their raw resource. The company’s operations extend to South Africa, Ghana and Nicaragua.

For EcoPlanet and some African environmentalists, commercially-grown bamboo could help reverse the effects of deforestation and land degradation that has spread harm across the African continent.

Read the full article: IPS