My newest revelations

So I just visited the farm of L* who has started a private company to grow bamboo, sell bamboo seeds, make bamboo furniture, and also produce electircity and charcoal out of bamboo.

Since the main reason for deforestation in Kenya is the lack of fuel for keeping warm and cooking, growing bamboo for this purpose has a lot of good implications for reducing illegal deforestation, protecting wildlife habitat, or of course reducing poverty and making life easier for rural and urban people.

L* is one of the small percentage of white Kenyans, whose family was part of the white colonialists generations back. He got started doing the bamboo thing because he really enjoys the outdoors and realized the only way to prevent deforestation is to sell wood for timber and fuel cheaper then even illegal sellers can do. Which is possible with bamboo because of how fast it grows without any imputs.



After seeing L's place and all the work and investment he has doing with bamboo, I realized that he was getting a lot more done, for a lot less money than ICRAF or the UNEP (from my experience). Maybe the future of good development is in the private sector.