Cambodia bamboo industry report

Quick growing bamboo could become a sustainable industry for building
materials and even fibres for the garment industry, according to the
organiser of the Bamboo Green Growth and Carbon Finance Conference
that took place at Raffles Hotel last week.

Organiser Eric Mousset, who also serves as president of the French
Cambodian Chamber of Commerce, said that combined with newly developed
environment-friendly glue, bamboo can be pressed and glued into
beautiful wood flooring, for which an increasing demand could been
seen worldwide.

"There are technologies and methodologies to play around with,
different types of glue, and it is quite a versatile product. The good
news is that the glues in recent years there has been research and
development carried out. Now we have glues that are biodegradable and
environment friendly. The entirety of the value chain is sustainable
from environmental quality.

"The next step is to develop the industry at a national level, and the
way is to implement some bamboo transformation factories to produce
beams and boards with special glues that create a product that is
harder than the hardest timber."

Mousset says having bamboo as a substitute for timber makes sense
because bamboo flooring is actually a superior product that people are
choosing worldwide in greater numbers.

"Now you also have to consider export potential because there is a
growing global demand for bamboo products especially bamboo flooring.
This is because of growing number of customers who are environmentally
minded worldwide."

In order to think of Cambodia as an exporter of bamboo products, the
example of China is considered.

"It is reasonable to consider Cambodia as an exporter in that market.
To get there would mean that the Cambodia bamboo industry would have
to reach the similar productivity levels as China. China holds close
to 70 per cent of global bamboo market. China has been able to
optimise their value chains. Bamboo factories in China are able to use
every single part of bamboo," Mousset said.

While most of the bamboo used in Cambodia and elsewhere in rural Asia
is split by hand and beaten flat to make floors for houses, fish traps
and other products, Mousset said it would be possible to invest in the
development of machines to split the bamboo as a Cambodian industry.

"The Chinese bamboo value chains are entirely optimised, and it will
take a few years for a country like Cambodia that starts from scratch
to attain similar productivity levels. But, demand is growing
worldwide."

Mousset said the bamboo industry is a possibility for carbon finance
to combat global warming because bamboo is a member of the grass
family of plants, not trees.

"It is been proven that a hectare of bamboo forest will absorb a
significantly higher level of carbon emissions than woods or trees.
That is one reason why bamboo farming should be more attractive to
carbon finance than the trees. The second good property of bamboo is
that it regrows very quickly. For construction applications, you have
to wait five years for cellular density of bamboo, but five years is
still very quick compared to wood," he said.

"Bamboo is not a tree, it is a grass, and therefore escapes the
definition of forestry for many ministries. Another goal is to raise
awareness about the many potentials of bamboo. There is another nice
property to bamboo which is stabilising and replenishing degraded
land."

A year and a half ago, Mousset appointed a professor from China named
Lou Yiping, who is a member of the International Network for Bamboo
and Rattan (INBAR), to conduct a feasibility study here in Cambodia.

Dr Lou Yiping is world expert on the bamboo value chain.

He presented concept notes on the Cancun Climate Change Conference in
November, 2010. That's one of the reasons Mousset was asked to
organise the bamboo conference in Phnom Penh last week.

The sponsors included Beijing-based Administrative Centre of China
Agenda 21 (ACCA21), the Beijing-based French Development Agency (AFD)
and the French Global Environment Facility.

"Another supporter was IISR, International Institute for Scientific
Research, a local think tank, and they were instrumental in liaising
with the ministry of environment," Mousset said.

"The purpose of the workshop was to exchange experience on bamboo
development projects especially from a policy and regulation
perspective. We wanted to find out how we could amend local and global
regulations to make them become favourable to bamboo products."

There's a United Nations programme called UN-REDD which stands for The
United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries that
channels carbon finance for reforestation.

"This does not include bamboo and we'd like to make it include
bamboo," Mousset said. Another use is bamboo chips to create bamboo
charcoal to create renewable energy.

More than 50 people attended the conference at Raffles in Phnom Penh
last Thursday and Friday, Secretary of State for the Ministry of the
Environment Khong Sam Nuon.

People came from China, Vietnam, India, Germany and France to attend
the conference.

Mousset said that since the textile industry is so important for
Cambodia and because Cambodia has to import all the fabric, the
manufacture of bamboo fibre clothing would be ideal.

"This economy relies on the textile industries. Imagine if the local
garment industry was able to source some of its inputs from within the
Cambodian boundaries. This would result in higher value for the
domestic economy."

Bamboo fibres have more absorbency than cotton, but the drawback is,
the acid used in the fibre process is not environmentally friendly,
Mousset said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Alan Becker at
stuart.becker@gmail.com

Bamboo bends towards sustainable industry
Stuart Alan Becker
Wednesday, 02 May 2012
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012050255905/Business/bamboo-bends-towards-sustainable-industry/Print.html