Kajiado community fights back against carbon offset land grabs

The Oldonyonyokie Community Group Ranch in Kajiado County in Kenya, in a bold act of resistance, has pushed back against the wave of land acquisition by organizations in the name climate action.

In the latest turn of events, the community turned against carbon offset projects which they believe threaten to displace indigenous people and undermine centuries-old land rights.

The move has sparked conversations on just how legitimate the carbon credit deals are. Civil society organizations in Kenya have lauded the Oldonyonyokie Community and called upon others to stay put and not allow carbon credit trading on indigenous land.

Greenpeace Africa, in a press release on the matter, claimed that at the center of the growing controversy are carbon market schemes promoted by foreign companies, citing Carbon Solve, Soil for the Future Africa, and Soil for the Future Tanzania.

They accuse the said entities of targeting community lands in Kajiado for carbon offsetting, continuing a trend believed to have already devastated communities across Kenyan border, in Tanzania.

“In Tanzania’s Ngorongoro, Loliondo, Longido and Monduli, the Maasai are being violently evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for similar schemes,” reads part of the statement.

According to Amos Wemanya, Responsive Campaign Lead at Greenpeace Africa, carbon market trading is climate colonialism.

“Communities that have lived in harmony with nature for generations are being pushed off their land so that foreign polluters can continue business as usual. Carbon offsetting is not a climate solution, it is a dangerous distraction that sells off our future,” stated Mr. Wemanya.

Climate justice crusaders emphasize that rather than reducing global emissions, carbon markets allow corporations, largely based in the Global North, to “offset” pollution through land grabs in the Global South, schemes which put a price tag on nature and make African communities bear the burden of a crisis they did not create, while enriching foreign middlemen and questionable local entities.

It is not the first time that the people of Oldonyonyokie have encountered attempts to disrupt their harmony and community unity. According to the community elders, they still carry a long memory of the case of Tata Chemicals Magadi Limited which was granted an initial 99-year lease on community land in 1928, and later received a 40-year extension in 2004.

The lease, which involved over 224,000 acres, according to them was the source of tension, with local communities raising concerns about inadequate consultation and limited benefits to the residents.

Greenpeace Africa further revealed that high ranking individuals are being used by the Kenyan national government to facilitate the leasing and selling of land to private entities, without transparent community consultation or consent. A move that, they say, undermines democratic processes and violates the rights of Kenyans.

The Civil Society Organization has as such called on Soil for the Future Africa and similar actors to immediately halt further attempts to force or impose projects on communities citing respect for indigenous people.

The protests come a few months after yet another carbon credits trade targeting two conservancies suffered a blow in Northern Kenya after a Kenyan court halted a major carbon credit project by Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) on the basis of a breach on indigenous community rights.

In Kenya, land carbon offset narratives presented as climate action faces harsh criticism as it is viewed as a scum and a cunning way for rich people through organizations to illegally acquire vast of land from unsuspecting indigenous communities.