Ghost biofuel projects: Abandoned Jatropha Curcas plantations and community wellbeing in Tana River County of Kenya

ontext and background In the mid-2000s there was aggressive promotion of large scale farming of Jatropha Curcas in Sub-Sahara Africa as a means to mitigate climate change through promotion of clean energy production and green energy security. However, many of these Jatropha projects were abandoned before reaching the production stage and ended up as a non-operational projects. The impact of abandoned Jatropha projects to the local communities that hosted them are an understudied phenomenon in Kenya and elsewhere. Goal and Objectives: The objective of this article is to explore how the failed Jatropha projects impact the wellbeing of local communities using the case study of Bedford biofuels project implemented by a Canadian investor in the Lower Tana Delta area of Tana River County in Kenya. Methodology: Empirical evidence of this article was obtained through individual and focus group interviews, observation and complemented with secondary sources. Results: This article unpacks the impact of a non-operational land deals on the local communities to advance the growing literature on the consequences of large scale land investments projects that get abandoned before the production phase and it submits that