Resources: humanitarian

Using bamboo in humanitarian situations: a manual

Bamboo is widely used around the world for construction purposes, including in disaster-prone tropical regions. There can be many benefits to using bamboo in post-disaster recovery, including supporting the local economy (as bamboo tends to be grown at the community level), using and strengthening existing community skills (bamboo construction knowledge is widespread in many tropical disaster zones), it is often a cheaper option, it is strong if used correctly, there are vast bamboo stocks in many countries (especially tropical regions) and it grows very fast when compared to timber or alternate natural materials.

Despite this, it has not been a common material in post-disaster recovery by humanitarian agencies, partly due the reluctance to move away from materials familiar to Western aid agencies such as corrugated iron, steel, timber and bricks.

The Humanitarian Bamboo project was set up after the 2006 Jogyakarta earthquake to redress this knowledge gap. Written by an aid worker with a professional background as a builder, it aims to translate knowledge about bamboo, including bamboo academics, bamboo technicians, bamboo organisations and community-level bamboo expertise, into a 60 page manual for humanitarian workers. It follows in the footsteps of the Humanitarian Timber project and the plastic sheeting guidelines.

The manual goes through four sections: an introduction to bamboo, sourcing bamboo, building with bamboo and further resources. It is written as an easy-to-digest text with plenty of diagrams. The manual is downloadable from its website, and is also readable online.

Alongside supporting greater use of bamboo in humanitarian situations, the project also hopes to support better use of bamboo. Another of the drivers of the project was the contested environmental impact of mass bamboo use in the Jogyakarta earthquake. Armed with little knowledge about how to sustainably harvest or purchase bamboo, humanitarian agencies did not regulate or investigate the impact of bamboo procurement. While the extent of the impact is difficult to measure, it is clear that poor harvesting of bamboo has the capacity to kill off bamboo clumps, which is certainly a concern for future humanitarian response. Hopefully this manual will support more sustainable use of bamboo, for communities and their environments.

© 2009 People and Development.