Government to step up efforts to promote bamboo development

MANILA, Philippines – The government is stepping up its efforts to promote the country’s bamboo development as a climate change mitigation tool and an extra boost to spur economic activities.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Climate Change Commission are working to craft a nationwide bamboo program for poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation.

Bamboo is considered as high-value for mitigating climate change given its fast biomass production and renewability.

Environment Secretary Gina Lopez said the government plans to invest in the development of bamboo, which not only has proven high carbon sequestration capacity to support climate mitigation, but could also sustainably support local resource-based economies.

“We input money there to grow the bamboos but the result of that creates an economic stimulus and then you keep on growing the money until people’s lives come up in time. It has to be impact- oriented and results-geared,” Lopez said.

“In the bamboo program, we do adaptation because that’s protection and then mitigation because it absorbs carbon and then we do inclusive growth,” she said.

Studies showed that bamboo has the capacity to sequester 400 percent more carbon per unit area and gives off 35 percent more oxygen than other trees.

The DENR, for its part, targets to establish one million hectares of bamboo plantation in critical watershed areas and other sites covered by the Enhanced National Greening Program within the next six years.

Lopez is upbeat the success of the program could help the country access the Green Climate Fund, a financial mechanism under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

“We need to make this work because if it works, then the country can be a recipient of a lot of money,” Lopez said.

Under the Paris Agreement, developed countries have pledged to raise $1 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries in their adaptation efforts.