A National Consultation Workshop: Bamboo for Sustainable Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Nepal

This national consultation workshop will introduce the new Common Fund for Commodities (CFC)-funded project in Nepal to the Government of Nepal, multilateral  donors, the private sector, and civil society organizations. This project aims to demonstrate how bamboo can be used in sustainable reconstruction as part of wider efforts to rebuild local livelihoods and communities following the 25 April 2015 earthquake.

The earthquake directly affected up to 8 million people and left 542,280 structures in need of reconstruction. The estimated cost of reconstruction is up to USD 5 billion. The disaster compounds an existing housing crisis that saw 30,000 people homeless and 732,000 housing units in need of upgrading pre-disaster. The new CFC-funded project, which is being implemented by the INBAR in partnership with the Government of Nepal, ICIMOD and the Nepali private sector, aims to contribute to sustainable reconstruction efforts .

Over the last 15 years, INBAR and its private sector partners in Nepal have developed a number of modern bamboo building systems that meet international ISO standards and have excellent anti-seismic properties. These systems and the related technologies are now mature and offer an affordable, durable, highly renewable, and rapidly deployable source of building materials for communities devastated by the recent earthquake in Nepal.

These developments offer the opportunity for Nepal to harness its abundant bamboo resources, estimated to cover roughly 63,000 hectares, for post-disaster reconstruction. This will generate local employment, reduce vulnerability to future earthquakes, and lessen the need for imports, thereby protecting foreign currency reserves.

While the current CFC-funded project will build only 150 homes and 10 transitional schools by May 2016, it is expected that this will demonstrate effective models for the delivery of housing to disaster-affected communities, which can then be scaled up in partnership with other agencies.

Objectives

The objectives of this workshop are to:

1. Raise the awareness of key stakeholders in the government, civil society, private sector, and international organizations about the role that bamboo can play in reconstruction
2. Gather feedback from workshop participants on current post-disaster programmes
3. Identify potential opportunities to incorporate the CFC project models into larger post-disaster reconstruction programmes

Participation: By invitation only

Media Coverage

• Nepal gears up to build earthquake-resistant structures using bamboo(02 Mar 2016, Published in INBAR)
• Use of bamboo resources promoted for earthquake safety structures(02 Mar 2016, Published in The Rising Nepal)
• Bid to use bamboo resources to rebuild quake-hit communities(01 Mar 2016, Published in The Himalayan Times)
• Let the bamboo farming to be taken as a national campaign(01 Mar 2016, Published in DC Nepal)
• Nepal gears up to build earthquake-resistant structures using bamboo(01 Mar 2016, Published in Nepal Today)
• Efforts on to Use Bamboo to Rebuild Post-quake Nepal(01 Mar 2016, Published in The New Indian Express)
• अब बाँसका घर(01 Mar 2016, Published in Aarthik Abhiyan )
• विपतपछिको निर्माणमा बाँस र निगालो(01 Mar 2016, Published in Nagarik)