MISCELLANY

Few of us know that bamboo is a kind of a grass. As city dwellers, we mostly see bamboo being used in scaffoldings at construction sites or while putting up shamianas, pandals or canopy on festive occasions as a shade against sun.

But the humble bamboo has roles much beyond what we assign it. It could produce energy at much lower cost, can act as carbon sink in times like today when global warming is such a critical issue and can provide substitute for cotton, plastic and wood.

One megawatt of energy comes from biomass coming from agricultural waste on 12,000 acres. If you need to produce energy by burning logs, you need to cut down trees on 1,200 acres to produce one megawatt energy. But in case of bamboo, agri waste from a bamboo grove on merely 200 acres could produce one MW energy.

Every bamboo plant absorbs 500 kgs of carbon dioxide every year. An average Indian releases 1.2 tons of carbon dioxide per year. If each Indian could plant three bamboo trees in his lifetime, he will compensate for whatever he has emitted. If all Indians could do this, India will be a carbon-neutral country. It is a simple solution to a very complicated problem.

Bamboo is a voracious eater of nutrients. It should be planted along all nullahs, gutters, sewage dumps and along polluted rivers. It will help neutralize some of the harmful gases emitted by them.
Bamboo contains fibre which can be converted into cotton. Bamboo yield from each acre can produce 5 to 8 tons of bamboo cotton whereas regular cotton is 0.5 ton per acre. Chennai Municipal Corporation is taking up plantation of the Beema Bamboo along length of the highly polluted Cooum river in Chennai. (Beemba bamboo is a hybrid variety that is high yielding and grows almost 18 feet a day, producing high quality of biomass at one-third the price of agri waste.)

(Based on the interview M. A. Siraj had with Dr. N. Bharthi, CEO of the Growmore Biotech Ltd. Hosur)

Charity begins at home. We all are concerned about cutting down emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. But we need to ask if we are ready to sacrifice some of the luxuries of life for the sake of safeguarding this beautiful world for the future generation. Here are a few tips:
* Cut down the use of fridge. Change the temperature setting. Even a 2 degree change will save a lot of energy.
* Do not use air-conditioner unless very necessary. Use fans to cool the homes. If possible, raise a terrace garden and plant trees around homes.
* Use the landline phone instead of cellphones as the latter require frequent charging.
* Use desktop more often than laptop as the latter too require charging.
* Avoid watching cricket matches for long hours. Several substitutes are now available now to keep abreast of the latest status.
* Switch off lights, fans and computers when not in use. Replace bulbs with CFLs to reduce heat.
* Dry your clothes under the sun instead of spin-drying in a washing machine. It will make substantial reduction of energy consumption.
* Cut down on car fuel by pooling the car with friends and colleagues travelling to a common destination.
v Use public transport instead of owning or using a private automobile. Cycling or walking to bazaars is a healthy substitute.
* Minimize air travel. Planes guzzle immense amount of fuel.
* Always carry a cotton or jute bag to the market. Tell your grocer not to pack things in polythene or paper.
* Eat locally prepared food rather than imported and unseasonal food as long transit or processing leaves big carbon footprints.
v Prefer organic food produce as normal crops are now grown with help of lot of fertilizers, pesticides etc which emit lot of greenhouse gases.
* Go vegetarian. Raising of livestock requires a lot of food grain requiring energy, water and fertilizers. Amount of physical work has come down in life today.
* Avoid bathtubs. They require huge amount of water.
* Save rainwater that pours down on your premises and channel it into on-site pits to keep the ground water table up.
* Stop wasting paper. Remember paper is made out of timber that comes after felling the trees.
* Opt for solar water heaters instead of electric geysers.

The number of hungry people has risen to 1.02 billion, i.e., about one in seven person goes to bed hungry every night. The recent global recession added 100 million people to the world's hungry population.

The agronomists agree that the world has the requisite resources and technical knowledge to increase the food production by 50 per cent in 2030 and 70 per cent by 2050 when the world population would reach 9 billion. But the major question haunting the food experts is that if the food production would rise in the developing world—where it is needed most—and whether it would be affordable by the hungry people.

The Green Revolution happened in 1960s and 70s when new seeds, fertilizers and irrigation techniques increased the food production enormously and ended the recurrence of famines. But it caused climatic changes due to increased use of nitrogenous fertilizers. A second Green Revolution is though possible, but not in sight. The scientists are thinking as to how to bring about the second Green Revolution without attracting the hazards that were attendant to the first one.

The experts point out that the Green Revolution happened mainly in Asia and Latin America and in areas where rice and wheat are main cereals. But majority of the hungry people are now concentrated in Africa where only 7 per cent area is irrigated and 7 or 8 staple crops constitute the cereals. Moreover, the foreign assistance for agricultural production has come down drastically inasmuch as it had shrunk to 4 per cent of the total foreign aid by the year 2000. Abridged from a report in The New York Times.