Bamboo offers significant potential benefits to the poor. The poverty impact mechanism through industrial bamboo is through an increase in farmgate price; a result of competition for large volumes of bamboo as input into the industrial system.

Bamboo’s potential to reduce poverty has been globally recognized. A good source of information on this and other bamboo related topics is The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan.

Bamboo is Good Business

Bamboo also offers a new line of profitable processed timber and fibre business opportunities. Mekong Bamboo's linkages and experiences in China, India and other locations has made us a leader in supporting firms to develop these opportunities.

How Good Business Reduces Poverty

In 2006, research by the Mekong Bamboo team and its partners demonstrated that bamboo can be viewed as three standalone subsectors: industrial bamboo, handicrafts and edible shoots. Structuring the industry according to these three subsectors helps to better identify poverty reduction targets and opportunities for working with businesses and other partners.

The potential for the largest scale poverty impact in the sub-region is through the industrial bamboo subsector. This subsector is characterised by mechanised processing of several species of bamboo into a range of products including flooring and engineered wood products, sticks, mats and paper pulp. The main priorities are to:

• Increase the volume of high value products (e.g. pressed bamboo, laminated bamboo flooring, etc) – currently around 3,500 tonnes in 2008 and only 0.3% of the entire luong (bamboo) harvest.
• Increase raw material utilisation rates of bamboo species across the various potential product ranges that the different commercial species are suitable for
• Ensure bamboo prices are competitive for farmers to supply and that resources are managed sustainably

These results will help ensure price increases for premium species, securing their long term supply to high value production and over time shifting low value uses to other cheaper species.