Dear Moderator
Please find below the contribution from INBAR
1. If you could make an intervention at the side event on rural women at the 8th session of the Open Working Group in New York, what would be its key message?
That bamboo can provide rural women with round the year subsistence and income generating opportunities, leading to greater security and resilience, for themselves, their children and their households.
The rural woman is the Queen of the Backyard, it is her territory. Without having to venture far from their home, away from their children, they can grow bamboo in homesteads, and produce a range of products, or just sell the bamboo for income. Bamboo enables reach to the widest range of market opportunities of any renewable natural resource. It grows on land not usable by food crops, and is drought tolerant. When all else fails, the bamboo will still be there. Bamboo is harvestable round the year; it can give a regular monthly income. The monthly pay check is the most valuable for all us urban folk. It can be so for rural women too.
2. Rural women are often described as critical agents of change in discussions on sustainable development goals. To what extent would the achievement of food and nutrition security for rural women help accelerate sustainable development?
Rural women have proven to be the best savers. They are very large in number. Drops of money do make buckets of investible capital. The achievement of food and nutrition security would make much of the savings available for productive investments rather than consumption. In Rajasthan, India, several thousand women have invested in a biomass briquette company. This has helped valorise the waste non-fodder biomass that is commonly burnt and raised their annual income by 30%.
3. Of the many facts or stats recorded on rural women, which one do you consider to be the most revealing?
That 500 million women around the world in 500 million poor rural households cook food for their families twice a day, each of the 365 days in a year, using firewood.
Firewood is renewable biomass, nearly all of which is sequestered CO2, one that should be celebrated rather than shunned. These 500 million women can be at the forefront of the fight to reduce global warming by fixing more of the CO2. INBAR has made the 2x365 times/year firewood cooking process an income generating one through valorising the waste charcoal and incentivising efficient burning. The waste charcoal so produced is 3x the global commercial charcoal production. In Tanzania, income of single mothers has risen 3-fold through this process, allowing for them to independently provide for their children. Bamboo is the most productive and renewable biomass in the world, and can help. It is used as firewood. Women in Rajasthan, India, are now incentivised enough to plant productive bamboos in their homesteads and farm bunds. Soon it will be adequate to meet their annual firewood needs. Not only will deforestation for firewood get reduced, but there will be reforestation and ecosystem improvement too. This is a market driven sustainable development system with no subsidies and a good ROI.
Hans Friederich
Director-General, International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) 8, Futong Dong Da Jie, Wangjing, Chaoyang District P. O. Box 100102-86, Beijing 100102, P. R. China
Website: www.inbar.int
Hans Friederich