PESHAWAR
A three-day training workshop titled “Mobile-App Base Bamboo Resource Assessment training for Pakistan” started at on Monday at Pakistan Forest Institute (PFI) Peshawar to increase the production of bamboo crops and to know their number and types through mobile-app launched throughout the country.
The workshop was organized by International Bamboo and Rattan organization in collaboration with ministry of climate change and environmental coordination government of Pakistan and PFI Peshawar.
The workshop was inaugurated by Director General PFI Peshawar Khalid Ilyas while Additional Director General PFI Safdar Ali Shah, Assistant Inspector General Forest Parveen Ijaz, INBAR Consultant Hoang Viet Anh, consultant Muhammad Khurshid and experts from all provinces of the country participated in the workshop.
Experts said that Bamboo is one of the fastest growing species and is distributed widely across some of the most bio-diverse and carbon-rich areas of the tropics and sub-tropics in Africa, Asia and South America.
They said that Bamboos is a proven pro-poor resource that has enormous potential for income and employment generation. In particular activities related to the bamboo growing, management of bamboo forests, harvesting, pre-processing and processing create employment and a source of income for communities.
Experts shared with the participants that the Bamboo can play a significant role for ecosystem restoration, climate change adaptation and mitigation and proved to be a potential crop for restoring degraded land, conserving soil and water and can play an important role for climate change adaptation especially in bamboo based smart agricultural systems.
With modern technology, bamboo products can be made very durable, they can last for 30 years or more and can be a sustainable substitute for other materials such as wood, aluminum, PVC , concrete and metal etc.
The speakers said that Pakistan recently become a member country of INBAR in 2021 and intensified its bamboo sectorial development for green economy development.
In Pakistan bamboo located more than 85 areas including Sargoda, Jhang, Kasur, Lahore and Dera Ghazi Khan. Proper protection and care of bamboo will increase its areas and export to foreign countries as well as it will help fulfill our needs.
Pakistan has limited natural bamboo forests. Since 1970, with government efforts, bamboo plantation has steadily increased reaching an area of 9000 ha by 1990 and 20000 ha by 2005 (country report 2005).
Bamboo planation have mostly been established in small blocks ranging from 0.2to 4 ha in private farms. Bamboo has been used extensively for construction and woven products.
Especially bamboo was successfully used for building transitional and permanent shelters in response to natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods during the period from 2005 to 2016.
