Bamboo Carbon Credits Info & Links

The goal of the project is to contribute to environmentally sustainable, pro-poor economic growth in post-disaster Sichuan Province, China. The specific objective is to increase livelihood opportunities by strengthening the bamboo sector in Sichuan, especially in earthquake-affected areas.

Carbon credit trading combats global warming by putting a cost on polluting the air. Tradable "carbon credits" were created by international treaty (the Kyoto Protocol) that aims to lower global greenhouse gas (GHG) levels, by setting county-specific limits for GHG emissions. Countries (and companies in them) that emit high levels of GHGs must either lower their emissions to the required limits, or they can offset them by buying carbon credits. One source of carbon credits is from conservation ("GHG reduction") projects that mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon.

12-16 July - A delegation of experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Rome was recently hosted by Prosperity Initiative to establish the feasibility of the Bamboo Carbon Trade Project in North-West Vietnam. The delegation included advisors from INBAR (The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan) to provide carbon and bamboo science expertise and Eco-Securities, a major carbon trade brokerage firm to ascertain the viability of various carbon trade options in the industry.

There is a severe and growing shortage of sustainably harvested biomass. The growing interest in biomass as a renewable resource comes from demand for biofuels as well as from demand for "green" wood and fiber crops that replace trees -- especially as a raw material for paper.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

for Africa programme has been certified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)—the first VCS accreditation for bamboo in the world.  

The VCS is the most highly regarded international certification standard for carbon reduction projects and is one of the most widely used quality assurance standards for accounting credits in the voluntary carbon market.  Its criteria for validating, measuring and monitoring carbon offset projects are based on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol.

A long but excellent 2008 article on all aspects of bamboo in India.  From Why to how to on bamboo.

Could the Mississippi Delta become America's bamboo belt, the breadbasket of a new class of homegrown structural building components? Earlier this June in Greenville, Miss., a group of engineers, manufacturers, bureaucrats and farmers gathered to discuss how land formerly cultivated for cotton might be converted to produce bamboo on a massive scale...

This Issue: Estimating Bamboo Biomass and Some Other Good Things Estimating Bamboo Biomass Last month,

Dr. Timothy Gregoire wrote,I need to come up with a way to assess bamboo biomass in Bhutan NFI.

I know next to nothing about the topic! Tim was especially interested in anything that has been done in the past 10 years.

He is also interested in rattan inventory as well. Here are some sites that may be of interest.