The legality, credibility and usefulness of a multibillion-dollar carbon trading project that forces pastoralist peoples in Kenya to abandon ancestral cultural practices are being questioned. A report published last March by the NGO Survival International calls the plan flawed, abusive, potentially dangerous, lacking the true consent of landowners and doomed to failure. However, the project has obtained the approval of international advisors and large companies, which have already purchased loans. The organization behind the initiative has made millions of dollars despite not owning the land and not being able to demonstrate whether or how the plan stores carbon in the soil. Survival International has dissected the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project (NKCP) exposing its flaws, shortcomings and failure to deliver on its Blood carbon report.
The project, which covers some two million hectares of one of Kenya's most remote and arid regions, 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, 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 the command post. Pastoralists are currently struggling with droughts resulting from climate change, causing famine and the deaths of thousands of livestock.
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In this context, the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) has based its 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 kilometres (over 10% of Kenya's land area).
His conservation work has attracted a wealthy sector of the West. The amounts it receives are enormous, so much so that other green organizations could get even greener, but of envy: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) alone has donated approximately 32 million dollars (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 area of peace and security – which have caused a stir among Kenyans, who wonder why a non-governmental entity has armed units and assumes a mandate that the country's constitution grants exclusively to the state.
The project is based on the idea that if pastoralists abandon traditional grazing for a rotational one, vegetation would have a better chance of (re)growing. 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 research center Oakland Institute documents the alleged involvement of armed NRT guards in extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations. Their report deals a devastating blow to their image, stating that NRT and its partners appropriated ancestral lands from pastoralists 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, vegetation would have a better chance of (re)growing. This would favor greater carbon storage in the soils of the area, which, sold as carbon credits, could generate revenues of between 300 and 500 million dollars (between 274 and 457 million euros), according to Survival estimates.
"Culturally destructive"
Before offering the carbon credits to buyers, the project underwent 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 struggled for years to get answers about the serious problems they detected. Some doubts were never clarified, but surprisingly in the end the project was approved. It has since generated some 3.2 million carbon credits, which NRT agents have been selling until January 2022. Although the gross income obtained by the organization 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 describes the credibility of carbon offsets as "deficient" and their impact on pastoralist communities as "negative". The success (or failure) of the project depends on whether it succeeds in forcing 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 pastoralists' livelihoods and food security, as well as being "culturally destructive."
How successfully these NGOs raise millions in funding depends on whether they are able to include white people, either as founders, as members of their boards or management staff.
NRT's demand for a change in grazing patterns seems insensitive to the problems pastoralists experience with increasing climate disruptions. It is a typical example of what communities in Africa face when they are forced to carry out activities that are difficult to reconcile with their survival and interests. For many conscientious Kenyans, although NRT was founded in Kenya, its philosophy and activities are alien and transplanted from Europe, and revives a colonial situation in which whites see nothing wrong with using force and money to introduce changes that do not 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 much rhetoric – in the project documentation and the reality on the ground: NRT did not properly inform communities about its plans, let alone "obtain 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 of land it does not own. NRT cannot escape the charge of carbon colonialism, nor can polluting companies, which see nothing wrong with dealing with an intermediary rather than the owners of the land where the project is based.
Still, the question arises as to whether the organization deserves the millions of dollars it has been paid by Netflix and other companies. First, the report notes, the project is based on the assumption that traditional forms of grazing 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 limited 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 vegetation has worsened." Survival's findings suggest that this suggests that carbon stored in the soil is also declining in much of the area.
The report shows that the project adheres to the long tradition of conservation NGOs in Kenya falsifying data to secure funding for those in the West who are willing to pull the checkbook. One cannot explain how NRT has been able to get the go-ahead from consultants and a huge amount of money from companies. The explanation is to be sought 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 its real value are questionable. One is unable to decide whether the whole project is based on a carefully rigged lie, obtained by a complicated algorithm, or whether it is simply a farce.
Gatu wa Mbaria is an environment correspondent in Kenya and co-author of the book 'The Big Conservation Lie'. The NGO Survival International provided the translation of this op-ed.
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