bamboo

Bamboo resource management: Ben Brown from MAP

Today I interviewed Ben Brown of Mangrove Action Project Indonesia (MAP). Ben’s background is in ecology and environmental education, with a focus on community-based watershed management, both upland and mangroves. He has lived in Indonesia since 1995, mostly working on watershed management. He now lives in Pakembinangun, northside Jogyakarta, with his Javanese wife and family. He has worked with MAP since 1999, and helped to found the bamboo treatment and supply business Sahabat Bambu (Friends of Bamboo) two years ago. Ben now works with Sahabat Bamboo and Yayasan Losari on a community forestry program called Farmers’ Field School for Bamboo. It runs in 7 villages in the Progo watershed, from Magalan in Central Java up to four mountains, working with village communities to improve the management of existing bamboo resources. Ben is also currently writing a technical manual with the Environmental Bamboo Foundation about improved bamboo clump management - which is very timely, from our perspective.

The issue that I was interested in talking to Ben about was the impact on the local environment of the use of bamboo across the 2006 Jogyakarta earthquake response. After making a decision to focus on transitional shelter, the Shelter Cluster developed and agreed upon guidelines for a locally appropriate bamboo structure, and promoted this throughout the earthquake response with trainings and promotional and educational material, including instructional booklets, posters and community radio ads. In the year following the earthquake, the Shelter Cluster built 75,000 transitional shelters (t-shelters), using between 50 and 100 sticks of bamboo per structure, consuming between 4-7 millions sticks of bamboo. Communities built similar structures up to five times that number.

Over the past few months, I’ve largely talked to humanitarian actors who worked in the earthquake response, encountering the general opinion was that while an enormous amount of bamboo was used in post-earthquake reconstruction, there wasn’t a significant impact on the environment and on local communities, that bamboo grows fast and there’s lots of it, and that even the worst harvesting techniques of clear-felling are acceptable in an emergency situation (Jogya disaster workers, is this a fair observation to make?).

However at the consultative workshop that we held for the Humanitarian Bamboo Project earlier this year, there seemed to be a clear divide in opinions between the bamboo specialists and the humanitarian camp. Like the engineers attending the forum with their ideas about correct construction (considered to be overengineered in the context of an emergency), and the bamboo construction researchers who argued for extremely strong jointing systems with concrete and bolts (equally overengineered), people working with bamboo resource management had a much clearer idea about best practice clump management, and were more stridently critical about emergency procurement methods. In one short day of formal discussions, I felt that the workshop had simply come closer to understanding the perspectives of other actors: a new appreciation by the bamboo community that the disaster community was genuinely interested in bamboo and interested in trying to use it in a sustainable, non-exploitative way, and disaster workers’ understanding that the impact of wide-scale use of bamboo was not as straightforward as it seems. However with the objective of focusing on humanitarian bamboo, there wasn’t much time to explore the issues and complexities of using bamboo. Ben Brown was one of the participants in the Forum, representing the bamboo/NGO community, and ever since then I’ve been wanting to talk to him in more detail about bamboo management and the impact of the shelter response.

The first thing we discussed was the choice of bamboo in the shelter response. The Cluster promoted two species of bamboo. Ben explained, “By and large, they chose the right species, Gigantochloa Apus. It’s fast-growing, strong, relatively cheap and abundant. Although they also used another species that was quite rare, and has become extremely rare now: Gigantochloa atroviolacea, black bamboo. We know that in empirical terms, because we have the bamboo business and treatment facilities, and we work with a lot of the furniture industry (the small-scale local furniture guys, not the exporters). We know how bamboo scarcity increased for them and for us after the earthquake - the price went up drastically during the period of exploitation, and black bamboo definitely became rare. It can probably be considered as poor species selection. This one has a higher value for farmers and artisans, and if you had done a rudimentary survey beforehand of resource availability, it would be been clear that the bamboo stock was limited.” [EDIT: Other disaster workers have told me that the other species of bamboo was not black bamboo - anyon want to clarify this?]

Ben adds, “If I am not wrong, IOM used black bamboo (G. atroviolacea) for the main structural elements of their shelters, while all the woven bamboo and nearly all other pieces (roofing etc) used by them and others was G. apus (light colored). Atroviolacea would be a fine choice if there was enough of it around, but there really isn’t. They could have looked into G. atter, which is quite abundant in Central Java, and also G. pseudoarundinacea which is abundant in West Java and would meet their requirements.

Within the international humanitarian community, there’s still debate about whether the Shelter Cluster’s decision to use bamboo across the earthquake response had any negative - or positive - or any impact on the bamboo ecology of Java. I asked Ben as a member of the community of people researching and working with bamboo his opinion of the impact of the mass-scale use of bamboo in post-earthquake reconstruction. While he said that he too couldn’t give a definitive answer, his experience has been one of widespread clearcutting with significant ecological, livelihoods and environmental impact.

Ben explained that clearcutting has a significant effect on the growth patterns of Gigantochloa Apus: “Apus might take one clearcutting where the culms would regrow to a normal diameter, maybe - usually it will come back much smaller. If it went through a second clear-cutting, that would be much worse and it would grow back much smaller. The third one you’d probably kill the bamboo, permanently. It is totally possible to kill the clump.”

The issue is not simply about the practice of clearcutting, as bamboo has traditionally been occasionally clearcut by communities. Ben elaborated, “We didn’t think that people clearcut their Apus, but it turns out that they sometimes do because it’s relatively low value and too hairy to selectively cut. It doesn’t require such stringent management as some other types of bamboo. While it benefits from good clump management, it can be hard because it grows so prolifically that the clump gets congested, and it’s not that practical to cut it selectively if it’s never been managed before. Sometimes they cut just a part of the clump, and then it’ll start regrowing on that side, and sometimes they even clearcut the entire clump when it gets a bit too thick and they have to sell it. They use the old pieces for construction, and the younger pieces for weaving. So we’re finding out that clear-cutting of that bamboo is a practice in communities every now and then. But it does harm the bamboo and they know it.”

While being aware of the benefits of using bamboo in the Jogya response from the disaster relief perspective, the issues that Ben emphasised were clearcutting of clumps en masse due to poor management, supply chain issues, and lack of sustainable procurement mechanisms. As an example, he told an anecdote of one village up near Wonosobo, about a 5 hour drive to the west of Jogyakarta: “On December 24 2006, 6 months after the earthquake, we had a verbal agreement with one village to purchase some Apus. We then came back January 14, and the 500 existing clumps of Apus in the village where we were purchasing from was clearcut to a stitch by a middleman was supplying bamboo to one of the larger international aid agencies.”

“According to the contract, they were only supposed to be purchasing older bamboo culms. But from the suppliers end, they would also take some younger sticks, as well as the really young sticks, because transportation was already being covered. So they could bring really young bamboo, bamboo that you usually wouldn’t usually get economic benefit from (because it gets such a low price for use as scaffolding and would not offset your fuel costs), as it’s essentially being subsidised. At worst case scenario it would get turned down at the international aid agencies, and then they would sell it on the market as scaffolding. So it was strange to see a whole 500 clumps clearcut. That definitely has an impact on the bamboo stock as well as the local environment.”

I asked Ben about how hard it is to replant Apus, and how long it takes to regrow after clearcutting. He replied, “It’s not difficult, there are five or six ways to propagate most bamboo anyway. It does take some time to regrow, yes. To get back to big diameter culms after you planted it, the first ones start to appear at year 4-6, but not many of them, so it takes a good ten years to get a decent clump back.

Clearly there seems to be a lot of good reasons to maintain good clump management.

Ben commented, “With good clump management, you can cut bamboo forever … Well, not forever, but for, say, 100 years - and you can make it much more productive. So what we’re experimenting with now [with the Farmer's Field School for Bamboo] is various simple techniques to manage the bamboo clump to increase productivity two- to seven-fold per year. Bamboo has the potential to produce lots of young shoots, but when it’s not managed, it doesn’t have the space, the nutrition, the dirt: there’s a lot of soil erosion around it, so the shoots can’t come out. So we’re working on some simple things farmers can do throughout the year.”

I asked Ben about the role of middlemen, and whether it was the standard way that bamoo was procured before the earthquake. Ben explained, “Yes, it was standard before and after. Most bamboo-growing regions have agreements with various middlemen. The size of the enterprise varies: it’s sometimes very small, just individuals, and sometimes a little more organised.”

We then discussed economic pressures to clearcut. I was curious whether those pressures tended to emanate from within the communities or from middlemen? According to Ben, it depends: “Sometimes the middlemen exert a bit of pressure and have people under their thumb, especially the more rural you get. But it’s also because Apus is undervalued by the communities themselves. It’s only certain species, for example they would never do this for Dendrocalamus Asper, which has a high market value with its big poles for heavy-duty construction. They can sell it for $2 a pole, but in a very rural area they sell Apus for 5c a pole.”

Yet Ben described Apus as a good choice by the Cluster: “Apus is strong, lightweight, earthquake resistant, and has a high silica content. It’s good stuff.” It made me curious why Apus was not valued by communities. According to Ben, “Apus grows prolifically, and doesn’t command a high price, and it deteriorates within a couple of years if you don’t treat it - although if you do treat it, it lasts a long time. Decades and decades. And it’s good looking, you can make nice stuff out of it. Basically, communities just get kind of screwed. There’s a big supply chain issue with bamboo: there’s a lot of middlemen, and farmers are stuck with their bamboo: they don’t necessarily stockpile it, or have good access to an equitable market.”

So there are a number of issues around social attitudes towards bamboo and economic realities that allow for situations like mass clearcutting of bamboo, which might take up to a decade to regrow. But what about the effect of that on the local environment? Ben explains that the ecological impact of clearfelling bamboo not only affects communities, but also erosion and water conservation: “For example, when they clearcut five hundred clumps out of one village, the potential for erosion is pretty high, but it definitely affects run-off of rain, infiltration to the aquifers, recharge of aquafers, slow-release of water to rivers, and all that, it’s all negatively affected. Bamboo plays a significant role in turning the watershed into a sponge: it absorbs a lot of water and releases it slowly. There are some decent studies from China that show bamboo is about 6 times better than other forest types at doing this, or for example ranked second or third out of six forest types including virgin tropical or sub-tropical forest - it’s below that as a pure bamboo stand, but bamboo mixed with forest is pretty high. From an environmental impact point of view, it’s an amazing and important protector of watersheds.”

A quote from the Environmental Bamboo Foundation website on erosion control elaborates:

“A peerless erosion control agent, [bamboo's] net-like root system creates an effective mechanism for watershed protection, stitching the soil together along fragile riverbanks, deforested areas, and in places prone to earthquakes and mud slides. Because of their wide-spreading root system, uniquely shaped leaves, and dense litter on the forest floor, the sum of stem flow rate and canopy intercept of bamboo is 25% which means that bamboo greatly reduces rain runoff, preventing massive soil erosion and keeping up to twice as much water in the watershed. Bamboo is a pioneering plant and can be grown in soil damaged by overgrazing and poor agricultural techniques. Unlike with most trees proper harvesting does not kill the bamboo plant so topsoil is held in place.”

With reference to the environmental implications of clearcutting bamboo, Ben also mentioned the impact on soils: “In terms of soils, you’ve exported all this organic matter: culms, leaves they usually put back in the soil. It was a quick exodus of nutrients, carbon and protection of the watersheds. It was significant.”

“If anything has the potential to provide disaster relief with sustainable building supplies, it’s bamboo - if it’s managed correctly and harvested appropriately.”

So clearcutting as a practice can have negative impacts on the watershed, soils and other environmental issues, and short and long-term effect on resource availability to communities. Was this avoidable? Ben considers that “the disappointing thing with the disaster relief people was that they nearly no mechanisms in place to protect the bamboo resource. They just want to know what is the minimal work that they have to do to ensure that there is low impact. And they can with bamboo, but they didn’t really take it seriously. So for example, the head of procurement of one of the largest international aid agencies said that it was the government’s responsibility to regulate things. Come on, do you know what country you’re operating in right now? If the government could handle this, you wouldn’t be here at all, working on disaster relief.” In this context, offloading responsibility doesn’t seem very useful, especially considering that procurement guidelines probably would not have been hard to set up, for a disaster response that managed to produce hundreds of thousands of community-built shelters.

Ben agreed: “Yes - get people checking clumps, and keep some kind of structural balance in the clump. In an emergency setting, you could take the 3 and 4 year old culms from a clump, all of them, and have no impact. You could also take a bit of the young ones. In best management practices, we only take the 4 year olds, and most 3 year olds, except for the ones that have to be there to ensure good structure and that the clump doesn’t get blown over by wind.”

“This is another problem when a bamboo clump is over-harvested: it’s sparse and the young ones have no protection from wind. So in the windy season, they break and snap, and then they’re of no value to the bamboo farmers, it’s just the same as having no bamboo. There’s a ton of snapped bamboo up there right now, in nearly every clump.” I asked where, and Ben replied Central Java. While there’s a lot of bamboo up there, Ben and his colleagues only have specific knowledge about mapping of the bamboo resource in two sub-watersheds, the Elo and Blokeng sub-watershed. It would be interesting to extrapolate.

Ben adds, “I should mention that there were some token efforts by the INGO sector for reforestation - for example, IOM footed the transport bill for 1000 seedlings that went in in the Progo Watershed (seedlings provided with funding from International Tree Foundation, implementation, SaBa and USAID -ESP). They should have built in a fund to reforest much more than that, however.”

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Ben concluded, “If anything has the potential to provide disaster relief with sustainable building supplies, it’s bamboo - if it’s managed correctly and harvested appropriately.”

In summary of the issues that came up in conversation, they included:

• Clearfelling due to economic pressures and community attitudes towards the bamboo
• Impact of clearfelling on future resource availability
• Impact of clearfelling on the local environment (watersheds, soils etc)
• Lack of mechanisms for clump management, harvesting and procurement.

I’d love to know the opinion of other bamboo specialists on these issues, as well as the perspective and experiences of disaster response workers. Are these comments accurate, are they on track with your experiences?

© Kim Williamson 2008