Thaindian News

Kohima, Sep 16 (IANS) The first-ever World Bamboo Day will be celebrated in India’s northeastern state of Nagaland Sep 18 to highlight the importance of bamboo, also known as “green gold of forest” for its use in over 1,500 applications, officials said here Thursday.
A week-long International Bamboo Festival also began here Thursday with a seminar on “Bamboo for livelihood and community development”, an investors meet and a craft bazaar as the highlights among the various events.

Nagaland Chief Minister Niephiu Rio inaugurated the seminar while Vice President Hamid Ansari will be the chief guest of the World Bamboo Day function Saturday.

“The main objective to observe the World Bamboo Day and to organise the bamboo festival is to promote the knowledge of traditional uses of bamboo in various parts of the world and to showcase the local methods of use of bamboo to the other parts of the globe,” Rio said in his address at the seminar.

The day and the festival are being organised by the Nagaland government in collaboration with the US-based World Bamboo Organisation (WBO).

Over 500 representatives and experts of various countries including Japan, France, Korea, Thailand, Norway, the US, Italy and Greece, and participants from different states of India will take part in the events.

WBO President Kamesh Salam said: “Commercial cultivation of the green gold - bamboo - and production of modern value-added products are gradually gaining momentum in India under the aegis of the (India’s) National Bamboo Mission (NBM) which was set up few years back.”

Salam, founder director of Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC) in Assam’s Guwahati city, said: that the eight states of northeastern India and seven other Indian states, including Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand have already followed the suit by initiating bamboo development programmes.

“To celebrate World Bamboo Day in a big way, the WBO will especially encourage and assist with bamboo planting to improve our planet’s health,” he said.

“This wonder plant is described as the ‘wood of the poor’ in many parts of India, as the ‘friend of the people’ in China and as ‘brother’ in Vietnam,” Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Achinta Sinha said.

Of the 1,250 bamboo species throughout the world, India has 145. Bamboo forests in India occupy approximately 10.03 million hectares, which constitutes almost 12.8 percent of the total forest area of the country. About 28 percent of these bamboo forests are located in northeast India.

There are about 1,500 documented applications of bamboos. The major ones are use in building materials, agricultural implements, furniture, musical instruments, food items, handicrafts, large bamboo based industries (paper pulp, rayon etc.) and packaging,” it added.