Bhubaneswar, Aug 14 (KNN) European Union has designed a project, “Promote bamboo MSME cluster for sustainable development” to Promote Bamboo Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) for sustainable development in India.

The project has been designed with SDG mandate of ‘Sustainable consumption & sustainable production’ to be implemented in 9 potential states of India including Odisha by the Foundation for MSME Cluster(FMC),  Small industries development bank (SIDBI), Commonwealth Educational Media for Asia (CEMCA) & Copenhagen Business School (CBS) under the European Union Switch Asia program.  

Bamboo is one of the most important nature’s substitutes for the endangered forest hardwoods and partially energy-intensive steel, plastic and other construction materials and lifestyle products.

Odisha has 9% of the Country’s total bamboo forest cover and 7% of the total growing stock of Bamboo. Under the intervention in Odisha, Sambalpur has been selected at the Hub of the project and Balangir, Bargarh and Sonepur are potential Spoke districts considering to availability of Bamboo and traditional artisan.

Bamboo is a quick-growing and a versatile resource that grows annually at 10-30% compared to 2-5% for trees that can take 40-50 yrs.

It has a tensile strength of 28,000 lb/sq. inch compared to 23,000 lb/sq. inch for mild steel, making it the world’s best natural engineering materials, and an essential component of earthquake-resistant construction and pre-fabricated housing.

Bamboo is part of the human race since ancient and at present, it has been considered as a sustainable resource for livelihood of more than 5 million people (50% are women) in 18 tribal-dominated states of India where availability of different species of Bamboo is very high.