The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) under the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises has launched project BOLD.
About Project BOLD
- Project BOLD or Bamboo Oasis on Lands in Drought aims to create bamboo-based green patches of land in arid and semi-arid zones. The first of its kind exercise in India, project BOLD was launched on June 4 from the tribal village Nichla Mandwa in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
- The project aims to boost the income of the tribal people and solve environmental concerns such as land desertification and land degradation by creating bamboo-based green patches in drylands.
- Under the project, 5000 saplings of special bamboo species – Bambusa Tulda and Bambusa Polymorpha from Assam were planted on approximately 16 acres of vacant arid Gram Panchayat land. With this, KVIC also created a world record of planting the highest number of bamboo saplings on a single day at one location.
- The project will also be replicated at village Dholera in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and Leh, Ladakh by August this year, under which a total of 15,000 bamboo saplings will be planted before August 21.
Bamboo and Environmental benefits
- KVIC has judiciously chosen bamboo for the various benefits bamboo has to offer to the environment. Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants. It belongs to the subfamily of Bambusoideas of the grass family Poaceae.
- In India, bamboo covers 13.96 million hectares of area with 136 species. Some of the important bamboos of commercial importance are Bambusa Tulda, Bambusa Balcooa, Bambusa Cacharensis, etc and can be used for making furniture, handicraft, paper pulp, construction work, etc.
- Bamboos are very fast-growing plants and can be harvested in about three years. Bamboos are also known for conserving water and reducing evaporation of water from the land surface, which is an important feature in arid and drought-prone regions.
- Furthermore, bamboos can be used to control pollution by making use of bamboo charcoal, which has absorption properties.
- According to studies (Anon, 2015e), bamboos protects against harmful ultraviolet rays, reduces pollution, reduce up to 35% carbon dioxide in the climate, and deliver more oxygen. Further, bamboo roots also help in controlling erosion as it makes a water barrier. Bamboo also devours high amounts of nitrogen and this helps decrease water pollution.
