Restoring the waters of our dying land - Bamboo to the rescue!
by Kwabena Akodwaa-Boadi, WBF Fellow 2021-2022
The Gold Coast, as it was formally called, has a national flag designed by a woman which tells a story of its past and present. The flag has a horizontal triband of red, gold, and green, with a five-pointed black star in the centre of the gold stripe. The colours of the flag are of unique significance, but two of the colours in my opinion, represent two resources which are often the subject of debate between tree huggers and industrialists. The Gold, as you may have guessed correctly, represents the mineral wealth and the Green, the country's rich forests. Under the influence of the rich and powerful, rural folks are caught between an ongoing conflict of Gold exploitation and Green preservation. Sadly, ensuring a fine balance has been an illusion for decades and presently in Ghana, as illegal Artisanal Small Scale Gold Mining (ASGM) most especially, is causing untold direct and indirect impact on the environment, contributing to destruction of our rich forests and poor water and soil quality. Our once clear, free flowing rivers and streams have turned brown and our forests, fast disappearing.
Bamboo saved me! My first close experience with the Green Gold came as an offer I could not refuse. I needed to supplement my grades as an undergraduate student. Yes, I was far from a straight A student. I was offered the opportunity to make them up through extracurricular activities. The task was to coordinate a symposium on bamboo and rattan together with some other institutions despite my little knowledge of the resource at that time. This experience was overwhelming and changed my life. Exposure to the potential of bamboo from local farmers, traders and technical experts was immeasurable. For the lack of a better word, I was bamboozled and since, a ten-year love affair with bamboo begun.
The period witnessed working with groups and some amazing people to basically make “noise” about bamboo. One of such persons was Emil Fischer, the co-founder of Bamboo for Integrated Development-Ghana (BIDG). After academic research work with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Eastern Finland on bamboo strength properties and bamboo products respectively, some of my proudest achievements were realized working with Mr Fischer in the remotest parts of Ghana under the Resilient Bamboo Agroforestry Project.
<Kwabena is the guy on the left!>
Together, we motivated farmers to plant bamboo and assisted communities to establish community bamboo plantations to contribute to mitigating the excesses of climate change in the transitional zone of the country. We established a 10-hectare bamboo agroforestry demonstration farm and a bamboo nursery where farmers could easily get assess to bamboo seedlings to plant. Our ambition was to gradually turn slash and burn farmers to “Bamboo Agroforesters.” It was fun!
Today, my country, Ghana, is faced with the challenge of reversing the devastating impact of illegal Artisanal Small-Scale Gold mining. I am convinced that timber bamboo can help heal our soils and restore millions of hectares of degraded landscapes. To this effect, the World Bamboo Foundation through the World Bamboo Fellowship program is supporting my research which seeks to test the ability of timber bamboo to remove selected harmful heavy metals from a degraded, abandoned mine site in the Ashanti Region of Ghana in a lysimeter field experiment. The research will provide quantifiable information on two species of bamboo and their ability to remove and store selected heavy metals. The fellowship programme has given me the opportunity to share and acquire knowledge from fellows and experts around the world working in diverse areas with timber bamboo. The support so far has been immense, and I am looking forward to translating my work into research papers and blogs for all audiences.
We believe in bamboo, so, we think bamboo! We know that timber bamboo can help solve many of our local problems including making available most of our basic needs. So, with the support of WBO and WBF, we shall continue to grow and talk about timber bamboo until a fine balance between Gold and Green is established, our soils rejuvenated and our brown waters turn clear.
Thank you, World Bamboo Foundation!
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