Treading in Kenya’s Murky Waters of Carbon Markets

By DOMINIC KIRUI -Nairobi, Kenya

It’s mid-morning at Itinga village, in Kenya’s Laikipia County, about 300km north of the capital, Nairobi. As the sun starts warming down onto the plains of Leparua Conservancy,  Lemerwes Ntiti stands with a faded gaze at his goats as they graze on what’s left of the grass and shrubs after a long drought that saw them lose pasture and water as well. 

Clad in a Barcelona football club jersey beneath a green khaki shirt and a Maasai shuka wrapped around her waist, the 29-year-old father of three stands with his legs crossed and leaning on a spear almost his height, like a typical Samburu warrior. 

On a typical day, Ntiti, a moran (warrior), would not be charged with looking after goats, as this is traditionally a child’s work among the Samburu, a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic pastoralists in North-central Kenya that shares a culture and language with the Maasai.  Today, children are gone to school, and he has to step in and herd the family’s ten goats that were left behind to provide milk and meat for his family, as others have gone away with the cattle in search of pastures and water.  

According to Ntiti, his family would have been forced to move alongside the cattle, were it not for an initiative by his community to save the grass by rotating the animals as they graze, allowing one parcel to grow as they graze their goats on the other.  

The initiative was the brainchild of the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), an organization working to protect wildlife and resources in conservancies in Kenya’s dry north and the eastern coast. It was named the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project (NKRCP) and is one of the most extensive soil carbon offset initiatives in Africa. World’s leading companies such as Netflix, Meta, and British Airways have bought carbon credits from the project.

Tom Lalampaa, the former CEO of NRT, who currently serves as the organisation’s Chief Partnership and Growth Officer, says that the project started over 10 years ago, with 14 community conservancies in the north coming together and teaming up to pursue soil grassland carbon, which, he says, has come to be the largest world soil carbon in the world.

“It was built around grazing management and rangeland restoration management, looking at the dry season grazing, the wet season grazing of the pastoralist communities, and really just looking at the livestock movement patterns over the years. And so it took a lot of time to do a lot of records, to build the deck. And then eventually, in 2020, these 14 community conservancies were able to sell 3.2 million tons of soil grass carbon that generated about 14.6 million US dollars, which is just slightly above 1.5 billion Kenyan Shillings,” he explains.

“It was planned in a way that one area is out of bounds, no one is allowed to graze their animals there, and there are consequences for those who break it. Like me, I once fell asleep under a tree while herding, and my goats crossed onto the protected pastures. The elders ate one of my billy goats as a fine,” Ntiti explains.

Situated in northern Kenya, it spans nearly 2 million hectares (4.7 million acres) of community-managed rangelands across counties like Samburu, Isiolo, Laikipia, and Marsabit. The project works in collaboration with local conservancies and pastoralist communities to improve rangeland health through better grazing practices, to enhance carbon storage in the soil.

A Moran watering his camels in Leparua photo by Dominic Kirui

NRT insists that, as they practice rotational grazing, the community allows for regeneration of pasture, which ensures healthier pastures that are able to sequester carbon and to sustain their animals during droughts. As a result, they have earned carbon credits from international companies in the free carbon market. They say that the area is expected to remove 50 million tons of carbon within a period of 30 years, equating to 10 million car emissions annually.   

Normally, communities fight for the pasture in Leparua, as evident from the spent bullet cartridges lying on the ground, something that Ntiti is skeptical about whether it will end because of the controlled grazing in the area. 

“No, not every one of us is doing this. And some live outside of the conservancies and have cattle and goats, and every Moran has a duty to feed them. They will, of course, come here because we believe no one owns the grass and water; they are God-given. And we will fight because they will leave none for our animals as well,” Niti says.

However, as NRT pursues the sale of carbon credits in the voluntary market, concerns arise that the community on whose land they work may not fully understand how the trade benefits them. 

Wanjiru Kiarie, the CEO of the Pit to Palace Initiative in Kenya, an organization that is nurturing environmentally and socially conscious businesses across Africa, underscores the practicality of bringing on board the members of a community in which carbon trading takes place. 

“Most communities don’t fully understand carbon trading - they’re signing away rights with fingerprints, not informed consent. Carbon contracts are highly technical, with costs, risks, and obligations buried in jargon. Most communities lack access to education on the end-to-end lifecycle of REDD+ projects. FPIC is often applied as a tick-box exercise, which means agreements are signed without clarity on what they mean long-term. In some cases, communities are asked to consent through fingerprints, having never read the English contracts they’re binding themselves to. That cannot be considered fair participation, Kiarie argues

Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol “allows countries that have emission units to spare - emissions permitted but not "used" - to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their targets. Thus, a new commodity was created in the form of emission reductions or removals. Since carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, people speak simply of trading in carbon. Carbon is now tracked and traded like any other commodity. This is known as the ‘carbon market.’”

In his speech at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP27) held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the Kenyan President William Ruto mentioned the project, saying that it is an exemplary project that the rest of the world could borrow from. From the carbon credit money that the community has earned, they have been able to build schools, water wells, and boreholes, and pay school fees for all children through bursaries, and also put up tourist lodges to earn them revenue through tourism.       

Lalampaa says that his organization does not make money from the project, only helping the community to sequester carbon and sell the credits in the voluntary market. 

“We don't make money as an organization out of carbon. All the carbon revenue goes to the community conservancies, and they have their own committees that oversee it. 24% of the money dispersed this year, they have put it under education, both in terms of scholarships for pastoralists for secondary students, diploma colleges, and universities, and also building education infrastructure,” he says.

In many instances, this statement has been controversial, as many carbon projects across the continent don’t actually fully benefit the community. Kiarie gives an example. 

“Benefits exist - schools, clinics, some jobs - but they are crumbs compared to the value that’s leaving Africa. There are examples. The Kasigau Corridor project in Taita Taveta has funded schools, clinics, and jobs. But these benefits are uneven, and at a systemic level, Africa is still ceding sovereignty over land and carbon value for minimal returns - credits that sell for $3-5 per ton here fetch $15-20 elsewhere. So while communities can point to some gains, the imbalance is stark,” she says.

In a viral video in June that was posted by Lynn Ngugi, a Kenyan YouTuber, Oldonyonyoike community members in Kenya’s Kajiado County were asked what carbon credits were, and they could not define them, only saying that they were told it was demons, and that’s how they understood it.  

According to the video, Soil for the Future Africa, an organization that claims to be restoring Kenya’s grasslands and savanna ecosystems - one hectare at a time, was proposing to pay the community $2 per year for an acre for carbon credits through a 40-year lease, something that the locals opposed.  

A 2023 report by Survival International, dubbed Blood Carbon: How a carbon offset scheme makes millions from Indigenous land in Northern Kenya, pointed out loopholes in NRT’s carbon project, saying that it was meant to dispossess the northern Kenyan pastoralists of their land, and that the organization was blocking them from legally owning and protecting it as provided for by the Kenyan law. 

Part of it points out that the project has faced growing scrutiny, particularly around legal, ethical, and technical issues. One of the most significant concerns relates to land tenure and the legitimacy of some conservancies involved in the scheme. Reports and legal rulings suggest that a few of the participating conservancies were established without adequate community consultation or legal clarity, raising questions about land rights and ownership. These disputes have led to legal challenges that could undermine parts of the project.

“There are severe issues relating to the legal basis of the project and the way it has been implemented. At least half of the project area consists of Trust Lands, which are subject to the terms of the Community Lands Act (CLA) 2016. This places responsibilities and obligations on any bodies seeking to carry out activities on Trust Lands, and mandates a central role for County governments in holding the lands in trust until communities formally register them. 

“As yet, none of the Trust lands in the project area have been registered (and community members believe that NRT is obstructing their land registration claims). There is no evidence that NRT has complied with various important requirements of the Community Land Act 2016 in its implementation of the carbon project,” the report read in part.

It also pointed out that there was an assumption by the organization that the local communities could not manage the grasslands on their own, and could potentially damage them by overgrazing, something that would not make sense, as the indigenous communities in this area have protected the land and ecosystems before the arrival of the conservationists. 

“The basic premise of the project, that it can enforce ‘planned rotational grazing’ within specified geographical areas, runs fundamentally against the traditional indigenous pastoralism of the area, a is conceptually seriously misguided, potentially dangerous, and probably doomed to fail. It is based on a long colonial prejudice that sees pastoralists as incapable of managing their own environment and constantly destroying it by overgrazing,” the report read in part.

A giraffe walks in Leparua conservancy photo by Dominic Kirui

However, in January this year, an Environmental court in Isiolo ruled against the project after 165 community members went to court seeking to stop the project in 2021, saying it had interfered with the free movement of their livestock, threatening their livelihoods, and affecting their social way of life as their cultural sites had been enclosed within the conservation area.

One of the members who requested anonymity expressed concerns over whether the benefits of the project are equitably distributed. He questioned the transparency and inclusion in decision-making processes, fearing that grazing restrictions may interfere with their traditional pastoral mobility, which he termed a critical adaptive strategy in dryland regions.

“What makes us Samburu and Borana is our way of life. And when someone comes and tells us to stop being us, living as we are used to for years, to survive so that they can pay us some money, is trying to wipe us out; and it’s not justice. We will fight it until justice is done and we are left alone,” he said. 

Experts now believe that NKRCP’s future depends on its ability to address significant legal, technical, and governance challenges. Ensuring genuine community participation, clarifying land rights, maintaining robust monitoring standards, and fairly distributing benefits will be essential to its success. If these issues can be resolved, the NKRCP could become a leading example of how carbon markets can support inclusive, locally driven climate solutions. If not, it risks becoming a case study in the pitfalls of poorly grounded carbon offset initiatives.

Kiarie says that for such carbon projects to survive, they must educate the community about the projects, be transparent in everything they do and disclose the benefits, and must also pursue alternative pathways to monetise natural resource. 

“Communities need education, not token workshops - they must understand the full cost-benefit of carbon projects before committing their land; registration costs, monitoring, credit sales, and long-term commitments. Currently, the cost of acquiring this knowledge is too high, which leaves communities dependent on middlemen. There should also be transparent grievance mechanisms and contracts written in accessible languages are necessary. Communities must be able to challenge unfair terms without fear of reprisal. And finally, beyond standard REDD+ schemes, there are options to monetise natural resources without double-counting, but these require experts and upfront financing. That’s where blended finance and partnerships can help bridge the gap,” Kiarie concludes.