The Director-General of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), Dr. Han Friedrich, enlightened his audiences on the usefulness and significance of bamboo to mankind and the planet as delivering a lecture titled “Bamboo can help to address global challenges” organized by the Institute of South-South Cooperation (ISSCAD), Peking University. Dr. Han in his presentation reeled off the numerous benefits of bamboo which he described as “grass with substantial sugar content”. According to him, bamboo can help greatly reduce carbon footprint of the world currently wrestling with climate change.

In educating his audiences, he stated that bamboo can be used to reduce the occurrence and overall catastrophic impact of environmental disasters, processed to generate electricity, coal briquettes, reduce soil erosion, promote land restoration, food security and even processed for bamboo fiber.

He encouraged policy makers to use bamboo for housing development and trigger more related structural changes by the practice of bamboo in their sustainable development plans and green economy strategies.

The Academic Dean of ISSCAD, Prof Fu Jun highly appreciated the speaker for providing intellectual clarity on the usefulness of bamboo, saying that Dr. Han has been able to force the rethinking of some conventional wisdom.

“Issues like ecosystem, public health and education are very important, without consideration of them economic development can be hardly realized,” he concluded.