BALI – For a first-hand look at the possibilities and potential of bamboo as a sustainable construction material, UNIDO Director General Gerd Müller visited PT Indobamboo Lestari, a company that manufactures a wide range of components which can replace wood, plastic, steel and concrete products used in construction and more.

Bamboo is a renewable natural resource and its famously rapid growth absorbs large amounts of CO2, thus helping stabilize climate change. Bamboo also provides a unique set of physical characteristics - great strength, rigidity, lightness and flexibility - making it ideal building construction material. Global demand for construction materials is growing apace worldwide, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where cities will be home to an additional 950 million people by 2050.

PT Indobamboo Lestari sources its bamboo from areas managed sustainably by the non-profit organization, Environmental Bamboo Foundation (EBF). The flagship programme of the EBF is 1,000 Bamboo Villages, a vision to establish ‘restoration economies’ in one thousand communities all over Indonesia. The programme is designed to empower local farmers, who are trained and mobilized to create their own sustainable bamboo forest system. Bamboo is a keystone for halting land degradation and providing livelihoods and jobs.

The EBF is one of the beneficiaries of a United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) project, Maintaining and Enhancing Water Yield Through Land and Forest Rehabilitation” which is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and supported by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The project includes the restoration of bamboo forests in wetlands adjacent to rivers and streams, an ecosystem that retains sediment, filters water and absorbs pollution, all the while providing bamboo for sustainable value-added products.