SOME FACTS

The world population reached 6 billion in 1999 and at the current rate and will have 7 billion people soon after the year 2010.

At least 600 million urban dwellers in Africa, Asia and Latin America live in "life and health threatening homes". At least one billion people do not have access to safe and healthy shelter and the number will increase dramatically with the population growth if the appropriate action is not taken (UNEP, nd).

One billion people in the earth live in bamboo houses. In Bangladesh, 73% of the population live in bamboo houses. It provides pillars, walls, window frames, rafters, room separators, ceilings and roofs.

It has been calculated in the Costa Rican context that only 70 ha of bamboo plantation are sufficient to build 1000 bamboo houses per year. If these houses were built with timber, 600 ha of natural forest would be destroyed each year.

Studies show that energy for processing of bamboo requires only 1/8th of concrete and 1/3rd of wood to create a building material of the same capacity. In comparison to steel bamboo needs only 1/50 the amount of energy for processing (Roach 1996).

Due to lightweight and favorable elastic property of bamboo, its quality to resist earthquake pressure is very good. 30 houses that were in the epicenter of 7.6 magnitude rector scale earthquake survived without any damage in Costa Rica.

Bamboo possesses excellent strength properties especially tensile strength. Study shows that bamboo is as strong as wood and some species even exceed the strength of Shorea robusta and Tectona grandis (Sattar, 1995)