Environmental And Socio-economic
Contributions Of Palm-leaf Geotextiles To
Sustainable Development And Soil Conservation
Author(s)
C. A. Booth, K. Davies & M. A. Fullen
Abstract
Geotextiles are employed in civil engineering and construction applications to
efficiently and economically conserve soil. Palm-leaf geotextiles offer considerable
potential to contribute to sustainable development and soil conservation. Their use
can promote sustainable and environmentally-friendly palm agriculture, labour-intensive
employment and earn hard currency. Ongoing field and laboratory
research is investigating geotextile mats manufactured from palm-leaves to evaluate
their long-term effectiveness in controlling soil erosion and assess their
sustainability and economic viability. Palm-leaf geotextiles are novel and offer new
bioengineering solutions to environmental problems. This is achieved through:
(i) Promotion of sustainable and environmentally-friendly palm agriculture to
discourage deforestation, promote both reforestation and agroforestry and offer
a potential for commercial development.
(ii) Construction of palm geotextiles to develop into a rural based labour-intensive
industry, particularly encouraging employment of socially disadvantaged
groups. In turn, this contributes to the stabilization of rural populations, thus
decreasing migration to urban areas.
(iii) Export of completed palm geotextiles to industrialized countries earns hard
currency for rural developing economies, based on the principles of fair trade.
(iv) Application of palm geotextiles are especially beneficial for complex
engineering problems, as temporary application of geotextiles allows sufficient
time for plant communities to stabilize engineered slopes.
Investigations suggest palm geotextiles are an effective, cheap and economically-viable
soil conservation method, with tremendous potential. Palm geotextiles offer
enormous multi-faceted environmental benefits, which include technologies for
sustainable plant production, promoting sustainable use of indigenous plants,
improved ecosystem management, decreasing deforestation, improved agroforestry
and successful and cost-effective geotextile applications in diverse environments.
Palm geotextiles improve socio-economic foundations for sustainable development
and the benefits for developing countries include poverty alleviation, engagement of
disadvantaged groups as stakeholders, employment for disadvantaged groups, SME
(small and medium enterprise) development, earning hard currency, environmental
education and local community involvement in reclamation and environmental-improvement
programmes.
Keywords: soil erosion, runoff plots, geotextile, Borassus aethiopum.
Keywords
soil erosion, runoff plots, geotextile, Borassus aethiopum.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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