Africa Carbon Markets Initiative: Is the opportunity to change Youth Futures likely to  Compromise the Rights of Local Communities?

As Kenya turns to the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative to achieve net zero while supporting national development and generating much-needed revenues, we ask, how will the country’s  most marginalised be protected? How can we ensure that all communities will have a chance  to be part of this green revolution? 

Kenya’s predominantly pastoralist, semi-arid Northern counties are at the forefront of climate  change impacts. Drought and unpredictable weather, including flash flooding, are interacting with historical inequalities and long-standing land disputes, putting already-vulnerable people  at acute risk of livelihood loss and violent conflict. 

Carbon market expansion can be a powerful tool to de-risk climate dependent income sources, rejuvenate the local economy, and drive global efforts to mitigate enhanced warming, but the  past behaviour of government and corporate actors guarantees nothing.  

We are calling for carbon markets to deliver jobs to local communities and provide them with  the knowledge and skills to produce carbon credits. Companies and authorities have a  responsibility to proactively engage communities in decision-making processes, ensuring that  they understand and are empowered to demand their land rights. All communities must receive  fair compensation for their resources without interference from intermediaries.  

Kenya faces multiple, growing threats to the efficient use of its land and resources. Between  May 2021 and April 2023, fighting between pastoralists, landowners, criminal networks, and  security forces killed over 200 people in Northern Kenya¹. Between 2023 and 2024, following  

a ‘triple-dip’ La Nina event, intense El Nino rains killed 500 people, displaced hundreds of  thousands, and wiped out an estimated 70% of livestock across the Horn of Africa, along  with much of the critical infrastructure, like roads and electricity lines².  

Two of the continent’s largest refugee camps, Dadaab and Kakuma, located in Garissa and  Turkana, further complicate the use of scarce resources. Historic humanitarian interventions  that encouraged host populations to sell firewood in refugee camps, have left scars.  Depleted bushland is fuelling disagreements between refugees, who cannot leave the camp  for work and have had their food rations cut in half since July 2023³, and host communities,  who guard the trees that are essential for their survival.  

In Kenya, where between 31%⁴ and 67% of young people are un- or under- employed⁵, climate  change’s disruption of traditional labour and livelihoods, such as pastoralism and  smallholder farming, poses a severe threat to the future of the economy and young people’s  ability to find productive, stable work, especially in semi-arid areas⁶. Exacerbated by low  state investment in services like healthcare, education and adaption, climate change in the  North is driving other unsustainable trends such as rapid rural-urban migration into county  capitals like Garissa Town and major cities like Nairobi and Mombasa⁷, or else forces youth  into the informal economy, where no standards or protections exist to secure pay.  

¹ Absorbing Climate Shocks and Easing Conflict in Kenya’s Rift Valley, International Crisis Group (2023) ² Urgent Investment Needed in Climate Adaption in Northern Kenya, Reliefweb (2024) ³ Dadaab Voice: Despair as refugee food rations in Kenya slashed by 60%, The New Humanitarian (2024) ⁴ The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research (2024) ⁵ The Federation of Kenya Employers (2024) ⁶ Youth Unemployment in Kenya: Its Nature and Covariates, Kenya Institute for Public Policy (2024) ⁷ World Bank, 2022

To tackle the pressures on growth and relieve the strain on opportunities, the Kenyan  government wants in on international climate finance, particularly voluntary carbon markets,  which function as platforms where companies, individuals and governments buy and sell  carbon credits, measured as metric tonnes of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas equivalents  avoided or removed from the atmosphere, despite the country producing less than 0.1% of  global greenhouse gas emissions⁸.  

President Ruto adopted the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) at COP27. Its ambitious  targets include creating 300 million new carbon credits annually by 2030, supporting over  110 million jobs by 2050, and addressing the continent’s climate finance gap⁹, estimated to  be $250 bn per year by 2030¹⁰. For Kenya, this means bringing green jobs to young people, in  line with Ruto’s value-chain, environment and natural resources-focused Bottom-Up  Economic Transformation Agenda as well as the outcomes of Africa Climate Summit  2023¹¹. Carbon markets are likely to be a linchpin in conversations on Africa’s participation  in the climate economy in this month’s COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.  

We are concerned, however, that communities already under threat from climate change and  resources conflicts will face commercial pressures to engage in carbon markets without the  adequate protections. According to Power Shift Africa, these risks include being excluded  from decision-making processes, losing land without informed consent, and receiving unfair  or minimal compensation in exchange for their natural resources.  

The term ‘carbon pirates’ comes to mind: it has been used to describe how powerful actors  wielding information asymmetries establish land-based carbon projects on indigenous land,  whilst curtailing access to economic growth and jobs for these vulnerable  communities. The outlook does not look positive in Northern Kenya, where communities are  routinely obstructed from obtaining basic services, starting with a national ID card, and  whose lands have been subject to grabs by government entities for commercial use.  

Programmes such as Verra, a major carbon credit verification initiative working with the  Northern Rangelands Trust, has faced strong accusations that its enumeration vastly  overestimates the positive effects of credits on the climate by double counting and  assuming that fossil and biological carbon are interchangeable, otherwise known as  ‘greenwashing’. This presents a serious existential problem for communities who suffer the  most from accelerating global warming¹².  

As a climate justice tool, carbon credits have been scrutinised, often labelled as ‘pollution  permits’ that allow companies to continue polluting, rather than driving down emissions to  absolute zero. Carbon credits may even lead to increased global emissions as they become  cheaper and more accessible, and have the effect of disconnecting consumers, particularly  those in Europe and North America, from the adverse local livelihood effects for those living  in, or adjacent to, sites used to create carbon credits in Africa, reproducing familiar patterns  of global inequality¹³.  

⁸ Kenya’s Updated Nationally Determine Contribution, UNFCCC (2020) 

⁹ AfricaCarbonMarkets.org ¹⁰ The State of Climate Finance in Africa: Climate Finance Needs of African Countries, Climate Policy Initiative  (2022) 

¹¹ High Level Roundtable on Green Jobs & Skills Development in Kenya, UNEP (2024) ¹² New report reveals major flaws with flagship carbon credits scheme on Indigenous Land in Kenya, Survival  International (2023) ¹³ Africa Carbon Markets Initiative: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Power Shift Africa (2023)

Clearly, whilst carbon markets have the capacity to improve developmental and climate  outcomes in Kenya, they pose threats at multiple levels, in different fashions, and across  jurisdictions. 

We ask ACMI and the Kenyan government: How will you include communities in decision making? How will you ensure that marginalised young people benefit from promised jobs?  How will you support them in demanding climate justice?