Camille Rebelo.
A climate entrepreneur restoring more than 40,000 hectares of degraded land across three continents — and developing the next generation of fuel from what grows there.
A climate entrepreneur restoring more than 40,000 hectares of degraded land across three continents — and developing the next generation of fuel from what grows there.
At TEDxBoston, Camille lays out the case that has come to define her next decade: why we are losing the race to net zero, why the industries we cannot electrify will decide the outcome, and how bamboo — a plant most of the West misunderstands — can power the planes, ships, and supply chains that fossil fuels still own.
Camille Rebelo grew up in Kenya, watching some of the world's most celebrated conservation efforts unfold in her backyard, and watching what happened when the funding ended. By the time she finished her degrees in ecology at Imperial College London and at Yale's School of Forestry, she had spent enough time across more than twenty countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia to know what most experts did not: that conservation endures when it pays for itself: that lasting restoration would be built on permanent livelihoods, not another grant cycle.
She decided to prove it. In 2010, she co-founded EcoPlanet Bamboo on a single, contrarian thesis: that the most degraded land on Earth could be restored at industrial scale — and that the bamboo forests grown on it could simultaneously sequester carbon, employ thousands of people in places without formal economies, and supply a deforestation-free alternative to the four industries still driving tropical forest loss. Fifteen years on, EcoPlanet operates across Nicaragua, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, and the Philippines. It is the first commercial bamboo operation in the world to hold FSC certification.
Today, Camille sits on the Global Restoration Council, advises governments on land-restoration policy, and was named to the 2024 Meaningful Business 100 — selected from more than 850 nominations across 36 countries. The next chapter is bigger: bamboo-derived sustainable aviation fuel, converting bamboo biomass into net zero liquid fuels for the industries that cannot electrify. A blueprint for restoring the planet that also powers it.
Fifteen years of steady building, mostly out of view, now reaching scale.
A few of the institutions Camille works with and has been recognised by. A few of the most relevant:
Camille speaks to investors, policymakers, and industry leaders about what it takes to build climate solutions at real scale. Fifteen years of operating across three continents informs every conversation.
Camille speaks across the range of her work: the financing of nature-based solutions, where most efforts still fail and what fifteen years of doing it differently has actually proven; sustainable aviation fuel and the industries we cannot electrify; the early forest carbon markets she worked on through the UNFCCC, and what they have become; women's leadership in climate operations; the estimated 400 million African youth entering the workforce by 2030, and the jobs that don't yet exist for them; and building a global business from Africa, in which more than ninety-nine percent of the team is local.
Camille has been profiled and interviewed across the institutions shaping climate finance, conservation, and African enterprise — from TEDxBoston and the World Bank to Lionesses of Africa, the Rwanda Development Board, and the Meaningful Business community.
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