A presentation given at the Global Bamboo and Rattan Congress (BARC 2018), 25-27 June 2018.

1. Bamboo and Rattan:
Potential for Gender
Equality and Women’s
Empowerment
Julie Broussard, UN Women China
June 27, 2018

2. CORE POINTS
• SDG5 & other SDGs
• UN Women and Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Change
Projects
• Women, Bamboo, and Rattan
• Questions to Consider

4. Women’s role in sustainable development
Empowering rural women is crucial for ending
hunger and poverty (and much more)
• Indivisibility of the Sustainable Development
Goals
• Women lack access to land, water, agricultural
inputs, financing, technologies and decision-
making
• If women farmers in developing countries
have the same access as men to agricultural
resources, this could reduce the number of
hungry people in the world by 100 to 150
million people

7. Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Change
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) in partnership
with UN Women developed the Gender
Mainstreaming training manual in 2016, to
support the integration of gender equality into
climate change interventions and investments.
The manual is designed to encourage projects
to include female voices and participation in
their design and implementation, allowing for
women to become stakeholders in the process
of eradicating climate change and alleviating
poverty.

8. • Gender Analysis: to understand the social, economic
and political factors underlying climate change-
exacerbated gender inequality, and the potential
contributions of women and men to societal changes
in order to build resilience to and address climate
change.
• Gendered Actions: methods and tools to promote
gender equality and reduce gender disparities in
climate action.
• Gender-Sensitive M&E: measuring the outcomes and
impacts of project activities on women and men’s
resilience to climate change through gender
responsive M&E.
GCF Approach to Mainstreaming Gender

9. Why Bamboo and Rattan?
Bamboo and rattan can help countries mitigate the effects of climate change through:
• Large-scale carbon sequestration. Well-managed bamboo forests can sequester significantly more
carbon than similar tree forest areas.
• Reducing carbon footprints of products. Bamboo and rattan can replace materials with high carbon
emissions, such as PVC, steel and concrete.
• Using bamboo as energy source. Bamboo charcoal is 100% renewable and emerging biogas technologies
have the potential to supply clean power.
They can help adapt to the effects of climate change through:
• Climate-smart housing. INBAR have just carried out an assessment of the effectiveness of bamboo
construction after the earthquake in Ecuador.
• Landscape management. Ethiopia has included bamboo it its Sustainable Land and Water Management
Programme.
• Providing alternative income to local communities. Over 8 million people in China have their livelihoods
from bamboo.

10. Women, Bamboo, and Rattan
• Both bamboo and rattan are light and easy to handle and process, often with just hand
tools, and in many cases hand-skills add the bulk of the value in the processing system –
such as the weaving – work easily done by women.
• The production of bamboo textiles builds on women’s traditional skills such as weaving
and sewing, as well as related techniques such as dyeing where women can draw upon
and use their knowledge of natural plant dyes and herbs.
• Bamboo and rattan are already among the world’s most valuable non-timber forest
products, with an estimated market value of 60 million dollars. Rural smallholder
communities are already benefiting by innovating beyond their traditional usages.

11. INBAR Bamboo and Rattan Projects
Benefits of Bamboo and Rattan Production:
• INBAR Sponsored Women’s self-help group in India that produced higher value incense
stick products that has created 150,000 jobs.
• INBAR initiative in Tanzania that has created 100 bamboo nurseries, micro-enterprises,
and training opportunities for some 1000 people in a specially-created Bamboo Training
Center
• Created new income streams in several rural areas in Tanzania, where communities
today produce crafts and desks for local schools.
• Charcoal briquette production and selling in Tanzania, generate income and slow
deforestation employ 5,000 women, many of them single mothers, who now have stable
incomes.
• Larger global markets are opening up for bamboo and rattan and traditional markets are
shrinking as they are being saturated with cheaper products made from materials such
as plastic. This is an excellent opportunity to offer women more involvement in
production and income generation from bamboo and rattan.

12. Questions to Consider
1. To what extent do community power dynamics affect the sustainability of
Bamboo & Rattan Projects.
2. To what extent does Gender Mainstreaming activities take into account
community customs and culture.