The INBAR Global Bamboo Housing Programme
Summary of the strategy (Draft)

Significance of bamboo housing -
The INBAR global bamboo housing programme emerged due to the pressing need for affordable and sustainable building materials to provide homes to the millions of people who are either homeless or live in temporary hovels. UN habitat has reported that 1.1 billion people live in inadequate housing conditions in urban areas alone and an estimated 100 million people are homeless around the world, with increasing proportions of women and children. To improve housing conditions to acceptable levels some 95,000 new urban housing units have to be constructed each day in developing countries.

In addition, natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes kill thousands of people and make millions homeless. The UN disaster assessment report 2006 reveals that poor building techniques and low quality building materials contribute greatly to the large number of people killed and the high level of damage.

The mitigation of above problems is not always easy and straightforward. Most of the building materials currently used are unsustainable, environmentally unfriendly and unaffordable for poor people. However, there is a natural building material that has not been fully tapped yet for its vast potential to provide eco-homes and incomes to the people which is known as "bamboo".

Why bamboo?
Bamboo is one of nature's most valuable gifts to mankind. Its remarkable growth rate and versatile properties have made it one of the excellent building materials. Bamboo has strength, flexibility, durability and versatility to be used as building material. Despite its excellent quality as a building material, it is also one of the cheapest materials costing less than 1.00 USD per culm in most of the countries where it grows. Last but not least, due to flexible strong longitudinal fibers, it is highly earthquake resistant. There are instances from many countries where bamboo houses resisted more than 7 Richter scale earth quakes whereas other concrete houses collapsed in the same areas.

Where are we now?
Bamboo housing is not a completely new thing. People have been using bamboo as a building material in many parts of the world. Guadua culture is well established in Latin America where one can see more than 100 years old bamboo bahareque and quincha houses. Similar cultures can be seen in some Asian countries such as Dai house in the Southern china, traditional houses in northeast India, Nepal, Indonesia etc. However, the knowledge and skills have remained localized and are not disseminated.

In the recent years, INBAR has been active in the collection and dissemination of the available knowledge, information and technology on bamboo housing. INBAR has published several books, manuals and articles on bamboo housing. INBAR has also done a few demonstration projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America that mainly aimed transfer existing technology to raise awareness of the people and local authorities who think living in bamboo houses is a stigma.

INBAR is also actively building a network and partnership with various individuals, institutions and private companies who are interested in promoting bamboo housing. Recently INBAR organized an international workshop in Beijing to share existing experiences and to clarify the future direction of the bamboo housing programme. The workshop concluded with a resolution to develop global network and partnership programme under the umbrella of global housing programme of INBAR and recommended various strategies to achieve the goal of the programme. The initial stage of the global housing programme has been supported by the Blue Moon Foundation of the USA.

Vision and mission of the programme
The programme believes that bamboo housing can make a significant contribution to improving the quality of life of millions of poor and disadvantaged people. It aims to substitute unsustainable building materials with environmental friendly bamboo for the construction; where appropriate, to provide solutions to the shortage of proper housing for the poor, to provide disaster relief bamboo shelters and to contribute to MDG 7 target 11that targets to improve the lives of slum dwellers with an environmentally sustainable development by 2020.

10 years strategy of the programme
i. Development and innovation of simplified technologies of bamboo testing, bamboo treatment systems, making bamboo panels and joints so that these can be done locally by using local tools and methods
ii. Dissemination of technology - publication, study tour, training, workshop, e-group, web site etc.
iii. Demonstration projects for bamboo building for at least two countries every year and for 20 countries in 10 years. INBAR member countries from Africa, Asia and Latin Africa that are listed as LDC will be the priority countries for the demonstration.
iv. Development of codes and standards for bamboo housing for 20 countries where demonstration bamboos are built
v. Build capacity to respond natural disasters to provide emergency relief housing to the disaster victims
vi. Partnership and network building - Official global partnership programme on bamboo housing will be launched and operational with all the active partners playing vital roles in implementing the global housing programme.
vii. Commercialization of bamboo housing - demonstration projects will be well documented to prepare business plans to develop bamboo housing businesses with a public private partnership approach where communities will have a major stake. This approach will make the programme sustainable in the long run.
viii. Establishment of regional technological centers that will provide necessary technology, information and skills related training to the communities and technicians.

Links:

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

The Establishment of the Global Bamboo Housing Partnership (GBHP)