The legality, credibility and usefulness of a multi-billion dollar carbon credit trading project forcing Kenyan pastoralists to abandon ancient cultural practices is being questioned. A report published last March by the NGO Survival International describes the plan as wrong, abusive, potentially dangerous, lacking the true consent of the landowners and doomed to fail. However, the project has obtained the approval of international advisors and large companies, which have already bought credits. The organization behind the initiative has made millions of dollars despite not owning the land and being unable to prove whether or how the plan stores carbon in the soil. Survival International has dissected the Northern Kenya Rangeland Carbon Project (NKCP) exposing its failures, shortcomings and inability to deliver what it promises in its report blood carbon (blood carbon).
Covering some two million hectares of one of the most remote and arid regions of Kenya, the project includes some 13 conservation areas inhabited by more than 100,000 people, mostly from the Samburu, Borana, Maasai and Rendille communities. Its inhabitants depend on natural pastures, and need water and other vital resources for extensive livestock farming, their livelihood. They inhabit a fragile ecosystem that has led them to practice a rational and pragmatic indigenous use of resources and apply a management system that places the elderly in command. Currently, herders are struggling due to droughts caused by climate change, which cause famines and the death of thousands of cattle.
In this context, the organization Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) has based his carbon trading project. Founded in 2004 by Ian Craig, NRT claims to improve people’s lives, create and sustain peace and conserve the environment, and boasts 43 community conservation areas spread over 63,000 square kilometers (more than 10% of the land area terrestrial Kenya).
His conservation work has attracted a wealthy section of the West. The amounts he receives are enormous, so much so that other green organizations could get even greener, but with envy: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) alone has donated approximately $32 million (29 million euros) since 2004. This support has given it visibility as an entity dedicated to nature conservation: it has been described by the European Union as the model on which it intends to base a next major conservation funding program in 30 African countries under the banner of NaturAfrica.
With such support, NRT has been adding new objectives to its conservation mission with initiatives in the field of peace and security – which have caused an uproar among Kenyans, who wonder why a non-governmental entity has armed units and assumes a mandate that the Constitution of the country grants exclusively to the State―.
The project is based on the idea that if the herders abandon traditional grazing for a rotating one, the vegetation would have more possibilities to (re)grow. This would favor the storage of carbon in soils, which, sold as carbon credits, could generate between 300 and 500 million dollars, according to Survival.
The US think tank Oakland Institute documents the alleged involvement of armed NRT guards in extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations. His report deals a devastating blow to their image, claiming that NRT and its partners appropriated pastoralists’ ancestral lands through corruption, violence and intimidation in order to create and maintain nature conservation areas. According to this report, the organization launched the carbon project almost a decade ago, when criticism against it began to transcend public opinion. It is ambitious: it starts from the idea that if pastoralists abandon traditional “unplanned” grazing for “planned” rotational grazing, the vegetation would have a better chance of (re)growing. This would favor a greater storage of carbon in the soils of the area, which, sold as carbon credits, could generate income of between 300 and 500 million dollars (between 274 and 457 million euros), according to estimates by Survival.
‘Culturally destructive’
Before carbon credits were offered to buyers, the project went through the Verra Carbon Credit Verification System, which appears to have a “rigorous set of rules and requirements.” The documentation reveals that the auditors appointed to validate The project battled for years to get answers about the serious problems they found. Some doubts were never clarified, but surprisingly in the end the project was approved. Since then it has generated some 3.2 million carbon credits, which NRT agents have been selling until January 2022. Although the gross income the organization has earned is unknown, Survival estimates that it has generated between 21 and 45 million dollars (19 and 41 million euros), and that part of the credits have been transferred to companies such as Netflix and Meta.
The report calls the credibility of carbon offsets “poor” and their impact on pastoral communities “negative”. The success (or failure) of the project depends on whether it manages to force communities to accept a radical change from the traditional grazing method they have practiced since time immemorial, adopting what the organization believes will produce the required carbon offsets. For Survival this would jeopardize the livelihoods and food security of pastoralists, as well as being “culturally destructive”.
The success with which these NGOs raise millions to finance themselves depends on whether they are able to include white people, either as founders, as members of their boards or as senior staff.
NRT’s call for a change in grazing patterns seems insensitive to the problems pastoralists experience with increasing weather disturbances. It is a typical example of what communities in Africa face when they are forced to carry out activities that are hardly compatible with their survival and interests. For many conscientious Kenyans, despite the fact that NRT was founded in Kenya, its philosophy and activities are foreign and transplanted from Europe, and it revives a colonial situation where whites see nothing wrong with using force and money to introduce changes that are not they benefit African communities, but profoundly alter their lives.
No empirical evidence
When it comes to the carbon trading project, Survival has shown that there is a dichotomy between what NRT claims – with a lot of rhetoric – in the project documentation and the reality on the ground: NRT did not properly inform communities about its plans and much less “obtained their free, prior and informed consent.” On the legal side, it raises whether or not NRT has the right to trade carbon stored in the soil on land it does not own. NRT cannot evade the charge of carbon colonialism, nor can polluting companies, who see no harm in dealing with a middleman rather than the landowners where the project is based.
Still, it raises the question of whether the organization is worth the millions of dollars Netflix and other companies have paid it. First, the report notes, the project is based on the assumption that traditional grazing forms cause soil degradation and that only the carbon project can remedy it. And NRT does not support with any empirical evidence the claim that degradation is due to “unplanned grazing”, according to the Survival study.
At the same time, the main activity of the project, “planned rotational grazing”, does not appear to be taking place. “The scant information provided by the project to demonstrate a decline in vegetation quality prior to the start of the project does not demonstrate this at all,” the report says. “If anything, the evidence presented by NRT reveals that the quality of the vegetation has worsened.” Survival’s findings suggest that this seems to indicate that carbon stored in the soil is also declining in much of the area.
From the report it is clear that the project adheres to the long tradition of conservation NGOs in Kenya that falsify data to ensure funding from those in the West who are willing to pull the checkbook. One wonders how NRT has been able to get the nod from consultants and a huge amount of money from companies. The explanation must be found elsewhere: the success with which these NGOs raise millions to finance themselves depends on whether they are able to include white people, either as founders or as members of their boards of directors. NRT’s carbon project is no different: it falsifies data, while its truth value and real value are questionable. One is unable to decide if the whole project is based on a carefully concocted lie, obtained by means of a complicated algorithm, or if it is just plain hoax.
You can follow PLANETA FUTURO on Twitter, Facebook and instagramand subscribe here to our newsletter.
#Carbon #colonialism #Kenya