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[10/27/2011]

What is wrong with using wood furniture? Nothing, if you do not care about how we can sustain the consumption of earth wood resources. As a starter, the world as we know it is losing its forests fast. This is causing environmental decline and extreme difficulty to secure resources for wood furniture.

On September 1, 2011 German Prime Minister Persson, who is also a member of World Resources Institute’s (WRI) board of directors, said “Restoring 150 million hectares of degraded lands represents an exciting and largely untapped opportunity to create more jobs and economic growth, while also protecting our climate.” The Bonn Challenge builds on a New Global Assessment, a WRI project, identifying that more than 2 billion hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded lands are available for restoration. For the convenience of the reader, the earth land mass is approximately 14.9 billion Hectares (36.8 billion acres). So, more than 13.4% of the land on earth is deemed as recoverable from deforestation and degrading. The target of “The Bonn Challenge” is actually aiming at one percent of the earth land mass or 7.5% of the deforested land. There are four categories of forests depending on the latitude and climate, namely, tropical, subtropical, temperate, and taiga forests. During the last century, the world lost 20% of its forests. The remaining forests are evenly divided between tropical/subtropical forests in developing countries and temperate/taiga forests in developed countries. According to Lester R. Brown, in his book, titled “Plan B 3.0 –Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” the developing world has lost 13 million hectares of forest a year since 1990, an area roughly the size of Greece, and the developed world actually gained 5.6 million hectares of forestland each year during the same period. He went on to describe that this net loss is worse than it seems because of the loose classification of forestland. Only 40 percent of the world’s remaining forest cover can be called natural forest systems capable to maintain all of their biodiversity.

What are the reasons for the over deforestation? They can be described in the following points:

Firewood: developing countries in Africa, Haiti, Madagascar, etc. have a high demand for fuel and resort mostly to woods used as firewood, over half of the forest disappeared in exchange for fuel;

Paper: this is still a major use of woods even though recycling in the developed world has reduced the overall consumption of wood for paper and even caused some paper mills to close but remains a major player of this arena;

Lumber: construction and wood products still rely primarily on the forests, in the furniture area, China has taken the lead of wood products industry and has been searching in the world for resources beyond Nigeria and the Philippines where the forests were exhausted, the recent exploited forests in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Siberia, and into the Amazon and the Congo Basin. Forest Trends, an NGO, predicted even those recent mother lodes won’t last more than 20 years.

Ranches and farms: Many developing countries like Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia exchanged forests for ranches raising cash producing animals and farms for commodity crops like palm oil for human consumption or diesel fuel, causing a term by Lester R. Brown, called “ecological/economic downward spiral” of no return.

Wood products include furniture, flooring, roofing, particle board, and other construction materials. Traditionally, we either stick with it or replace them with other materials like aluminum, cement, gypsum, plastics, etc. for many other good reasons. However, in furniture, bamboo is the only one that is organic and has been made from ancient times to the recent decade of “green” movement into environmentally sustainable bamboo furniture. The bamboo forests are also spread in all continents primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. They are already part of the eco-systems like the wood forests but they really belong to grass species, which mean they can grow right back after being cut from the stems. The world population continues to expand and the demand for furniture will continue to rise above the lagging supply by the wood furniture industry. Granted the developing countries will always strive to leap frog and catch up with the developed countries because the latter seem to set the standards.

How does our world connect with the rest of the world? One way is through the use of imported furniture, which is the rule rather than the exception in the last decade.

Needless to say, there is a long way to go before the furniture market is tipping over to bamboo. It is time however to make a personal statement in support of the “green” or environmental sustainability. Use more bamboo furniture rather than cutting down the last tree in the forest near you (you are lucky to find it).


Paul Pai, Ed.D.





圖:5108Bamboo Folding Armrest Chair


Get the Guide to Bamboo Home Decoration and browse many bamboo furniture and bamboo decor at www.finebamboochairs.com. If you'd like to contribute your articles to Bamboo Home Decorating Guide, just add them to the popular content directory, IdeaMarketers.com, and your Bamboo Home Decorating articles will also appear on The Bamboo Home Decorating Guide!Paul Pai, Ed.D., is the founder and president of MLP Global, LLC, a California-based Internet Retail Company, specialized in bamboo furniture and bamboo decor. The "green" furniture is made of matured bamboo in its natural color and only treated with oil for easy maintenance. The home decors are authentic and suitable for the entire home. Paul is also a higher education collaboration consultant who worked and lived in seven states from coast to coast in the USA and concurrently consulted in China for the last twelve years. His passion of environmental sustainability drives him to continuously seek ways to contribute to the world sustainability education.

Paul Pai, Ed.D., is the founder and president of MLP Global, LLC, a California-based Internet retail company of bamboo furniture and bamboo decor. Find out what bamboo furniture such as bamboo folding chairs, bamboo coffee table, bamboo shelves, bamboo curtain, bamboo frames, etc., at HTTP://www.finebamboochairs.com. Paul is also an international higher education consultant with 36 years of living and working experience in seven states from coast to coast in the USA and overseas in Asia. His passion of environmental sustainability drives him to seek continuously for ways to promote world sustainability education.







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