PRESS RELEASE: ARCHITECT DAVID SANDS of BAMBOO LIVING, STATEMENT AT RIO CIFOR 8th Roundtable on FORESTS

Frances Seymour, Director General                  

Center for International Forest Research
(CIFOR)
Sindangbarang, Bogor, 16115 Indonesia

His Royal Highness
The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum




June 18, 2012

Dear Director General Seymour, et al:

Regrettably, I was unable to attend the 8^th Forest Roundtable as planned due to circumstances outside my control. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the Roundtable's agenda. In my opinion there can be no discussion of sustainability unless it begins and ends with the conservation and management of our rapidly vanishing global forest resources. In particular, it was the one forum for which I humbly believed my voice carried weight, as I have the ability to say that I am the co-founder of a decade old global business that integrated the use of a historically handicraft raw material -bamboo- and engineered its natural properties into a high performance building material. Over the years, BT has found great value in the ability to market from the U.S. its developing-country Vietnam produced goods as ICC certified; and likewise agrees with CIFOR's position that similar indirect market mechanisms should be scaled up to support and promote demand side regulation for green commodities.

My company -Bamboo Technologies, LLC- is a significant example that 1) consumers will embrace new material buildings when they exude quality, perform and carry genuine green values; 2) that myriad three-bottom-line forest economies -based on non-timber forest product agroforestry- are a viable development model delivering healthy ecosystems and sustainable communities. Add to this REDD+ and a synergistic driver of genuine 3BL economic models is achievable. Coupled with integrated reporting metrics and CSR, the private sector would likely look favorably on finance for REDD+ (which according to CIFOR is an industry with a potential to deliver an additional US $13 billion in resources per annum by 2020.)

For BT, bamboo proved a high performance timber replacement material; a rapidly renewable; a carbon capture device, when caringly produced, can balance emission reduction goals with the well being of forest communities, including their participation, rights and knowledge. The principle of 'caring' production is very much an ethic that connects the raw material to forest to community to business to consumer. A new broadened stakeholder 'profit' paradigm. BT's experience has now led to the promotion of a hybrid cross cutting public private partnership model, that includes government concessional community forest cooperatives managed and monitored by regional and national NGO. This type of relationship building takes time, resources and insight, but it is the type of commitment required of transitional change, and is the check and balance security that private markets and REDD+ will and must require for transparency.

Finally, BT's research and experience has demonstrated that the treatment of forests as 'museums' that remove humankind from the forest natural econ-ecosystem is as unnatural as over-exploitation. A decade of experience and deep investigation of the critical 3BL objectives favor -and arguably cannot realistically exist without market mechanisms and a view that forest economy and products are the clear source of economic growth and poverty reduction for developing countries.

Respectfully Submitted,

/s/
David Elliott Sands
Co-Founder, Bamboo Technologies, LLC
a Rio+20 Forum representative of,
The Peerless Green Initiatives Network
a Global Compact Member

cc:

UNEP, TEEB
UNGC
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum

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