20m poles a year for Rohingya camps shrink bamboo forest fast in Ctg, Cox's Bazar

Highlights:

• Over 80% of Bangladesh's bamboo forests vanished in 15 years
• Rohingya refugee camps drove massive bamboo demand after 2017
• Forest area shrank from 830,000 to 145,619 hectares
• Camps consume 20 million bamboo poles annually
• Lack of treatment facilities causes rapid bamboo waste and overharvesting
• Urgent conservation needed to prevent long-term ecological and economic damage

Bangladesh's bamboo forests, once widespread and self-renewing across much of the country, are vanishing at a worrying pace, setting off alarm bells among environmentalists and forestry experts.

Over the past 15 years, more than 80% of the country's bamboo groves have disappeared, a decline many say reflects how extraction has raced far ahead of nature's ability to recover.

Population growth, expanding settlements, and long-term deforestation have steadily eaten away at bamboo resources. But the real turning point came in 2017, when more than one million Rohingya refugees crossed into Bangladesh after fleeing mass violence in Myanmar. 

Faced with an urgent humanitarian crisis in Cox's Bazar, aid agencies turned almost entirely to bamboo to build shelters and basic infrastructure. Overnight, bamboo became the backbone of survival – and demand surged like never before.

Md Akhtar Hossain, professor at the Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Chittagong, said, "The construction of refugee shelters, roads, bridges, medical facilities, and service centres depends almost entirely on bamboo. Every year, the refugee camps require 20 million bamboo poles. All bamboo in the Chattogram-Cox's Bazar region has been exhausted, and bamboo now has to be supplied from northern districts such as Panchagarh, Nilphamari, Thakurgaon, Rangpur, and Kurigram to meet camp requirements.

Historical data underscores the severity of the decline. Earlier surveys by international and national agencies documented vast bamboo coverage across the country, but recent assessments show a drastic reduction.

Infograph: TBS

A 2005 study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and INBAR estimated Bangladesh's bamboo forests at about 830,000 hectares. By 2016-17, the Bangladesh Forest Research Institute recorded a drop to 500,000 hectares. The latest Bangladesh Forest Inventory in 2023 shows an even sharper fall, to just 145,619 hectares – evidence of a resource in free decline.

In Cox's Bazar, where around 1.1 million Rohingya refugees now live across roughly 600 acres, large areas of bamboo groves and other vegetation were cleared during camp construction. The impact did not stop there. To keep the camps standing, bamboo has been hauled in from northern districts and hill areas, quietly emptying forests hundreds of kilometres away.

Many traders entered the bamboo business only after the camps began to rise, drawn by soaring demand. Nazim Uddin, a supplier to the camps, told The Business Standard that two types of bamboo are mainly used: Muli bamboo (Melocanna baccifera) and Barak bamboo (Bambusa balcooa). 

While Muli bamboo grows in parts of Khagrachhari, most of it now comes from the northern area of the country. Barak bamboo, stronger and straighter, is in far higher demand for structural work.

Nazim said Barak bamboo must be straight, about 20 feet long, and roughly two and a half feet thick. Smaller Muli bamboo is used mainly for roofing. Most bamboo is trucked from the north in covered vans, then soaked for 15 days in chemical treatment plants to prevent insect damage and improve durability. Transporting a single Barak bamboo pole to Cox's Bazar costs around Tk320.

Nilphamari-based supplier Ziaur Rahman said only top-grade bamboo is accepted for the camps, with bent pieces turned away. Each pole sells for Tk220 to Tk300, and a truck carries around 520 to 550 pieces at a time. He added that suppliers face additional informal costs along the way, including payments at checkpoints, while vehicle rental is paid separately by buyers.

Demand, he said, spiked sharply during the early days of camp construction, resulting in heavy extraction from the forests. Building just one two-room shelter requires 10 to 12 Barak bamboo poles. Multiplied across hundreds of thousands of shelters, the scale becomes hard to ignore – and harder still for the forests to bear.

What began as an emergency response has quietly become a long-term strain on one of Bangladesh's most important natural resources, raising a pressing question: how long can the bamboo forests keep giving before they have nothing left to give back?

A global resource under stress

Worldwide, bamboo covers about 31 million hectares and supports the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people. It is recognised globally for its resilience, rapid growth, ecological importance, carbon sequestration potential, and economic value in construction, handicrafts, erosion control and soil conservation.

In Bangladesh, bamboo remains integral to rural life and local economies, used for housing, scaffolding, furniture, household items and traditional crafts. Economic studies estimate that bamboo products contribute more than $120 million annually to the national market, demonstrating the plant's role as a vital livelihood source.

Researchers warn that the ecological importance of bamboo makes its disappearance even more troubling. According to Waheeda Parvin of the BFRI's Silviculture and Genetics division, bamboo absorbs several times more carbon than many other plants, making it an essential ally in climate mitigation.

She notes that interest in bamboo cultivation is increasing, and BFRI receives frequent requests for saplings and training. The institute produces around thirty thousand saplings each year, yet demand far exceeds supply.

Lack of treatment plant driving waste and forest loss

The lack of bamboo treatment facilities is compounding the crisis. Untreated bamboo lasts only a few months to two years, whereas treated bamboo, soaked in specific preservative solutions, can remain strong for ten to fifteen years. Prof Hossain points out that Bangladesh's biggest challenge is the near absence of such facilities.

In the Rohingya camps, only about 5% of the twenty million bamboo poles used annually receive proper treatment. It means, roughly 80% of the potential lifespan of bamboo is getting wasted due to the lack of treatment.

95% of bamboo trees are harvested young and degrade quickly, forcing continuous extraction from forests and contributing to a cycle of waste and depletion. While organisations such as BRAC and IOM operate small treatment units, the capacity remains far too low.

Researchers also observe that bamboo's commercial value has been declining. A bamboo pole that once sold for Tk100 could be used to produce goods worth six to seven hundred taka. Today, plastic has overtaken many of these applications, reducing the profitability of bamboo-based products.

This decline, combined with uncertainty over how long the Rohingya camps will remain, has discouraged private sector interest in long-term bamboo cultivation and treatment investments. Experts argue that government-led initiatives, particularly treatment plants and conservation programmes, are now urgently needed.

Efforts to preserve the country's bamboo diversity have existed for decades. In 1973, BFRI established a five-acre bamboo garden in Sholoshohor, Chattogram. The Syed Murtaza Hasan Bamboo Centre, as it is now known, preserves 37 species of bamboo and functions as a research facility, seed bank, training centre and conservation hub. The institute has also developed three new bamboo varieties in recent years, contributing to both biodiversity and cultivation potential.

Still, researchers warn that these efforts are nowhere near enough to reverse the rapid loss of bamboo forests. The current pace of extraction, driven heavily by humanitarian necessity, economic pressures and a lack of sustainable practices, threatens to push bamboo ecosystems into long-term decline. Without urgent intervention, Bangladesh risks losing one of its most ecologically valuable, economically significant and culturally rooted natural resources.

The shrinking bamboo landscape is not just a supply shortage; it is an unfolding environmental crisis. If current trends continue, experts fear that the country's bamboo forests may not recover, weakening ecosystems, eroding rural livelihoods and diminishing Bangladesh's ability to build climate resilience in the years ahead.