“Our leaders are misusing that money. Nobody knows about carbon.” DW documentary on the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project, Kenya

No free, prior informed consent. Loss of livelihoods. Human rights abuses.

In 2021, the Oakland Institute published a report that revealed, “the devastating impact of privatized and neo-colonial wildlife conservation and safari tourism on Indigenous pastoralist communities” in Kenya. The report exposed how local communities accuse the Northern Rangelands Trust and the Kenya Wildlife Services of dispossessing them of their lands through corruption, co-optation, as well as intimidation and violence, to create wildlife conservancies.

The Northern Rangelands Trust was created in 2004 by Ian Craig, whose family was part of the elite white minority during British colonialism. In the 1970s, Craig converted his family’s cattle ranch to a rhinoceros sanctuary, and renamed it Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in the 1980s.

NRT has since expanded to include 45 conservancies, covering an area of more than six million hectares.

In July 2024, Craig resigned, accusing NRT’s CEO of racism. He was also concerned about the organisation’s lack of transparency.

The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project

The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project covers more than two million hectares — 14 of the NRT conservancies. In March 2023, Survival International published a damning report highlighting impacts on communities, such as preventing migration during droughts and a failure to conduct a proper process of free, prior and informed consent.

In December 2023, the project featured in a documentary by the Austrian TV programme ORF. The documentary focusses on increasing conflicts in the region of the carbon project. One herder accused NRT of generating carbon offsets “not by controlling grazing patterns, as they claim, but by displacing people through conflict”.

Recently, Germany’s Deutsche Welle travelled to Kenya to investigate the project.

DW’s reporter, Daniel Plafker, explains that

For centuries nomadic herders have migrated seasonally here in search of fresh pastures. But today, the land has become ground zero in the scramble for a new and lucrative natural resource. One that is tearing communities apart. Carbon offsets have become big business here.

The project controls where and when livestock can graze, in a system called “planned rotational grazing” in order that grasslands store more carbon.

“Now, fences and weapons are proliferating across this fragile landscape,” DW reports.

Big Polluters including Netflix and Meta have spent millions of dollars on carbon offsets from the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project. By 2022, the companies had bought more than 250,000 carbon offsets from the project.

The money from the sale of carbon offsets pays the salaries of the staff at the conservancies and goes toward community projects such as wells and schools.

“It’s not right at all”

DW speaks to Lamako Charo, who has been travelling for two days. He says the project’s grazing boundaries have forced him to come north to look for pasture for his animals. Charo says that,

“Life in this place is hard. The grass has been scarce and is only getting scarcer. We are forced to migrate almost up to their fenceline. It’s such a close distance. The grass is just there and our cows are here. Yet our cattle die of drought and the grass is just there beyond the fence. It’s not right at all.”

The DW documentary team sets off to the Sera Conservancy to look at the fences themselves. The herders have told them that a fence is blocking pastoralists from pasture. But the documentary team is blocked by the Sera Conservancy rangers.

The rangers are not employed by any government security service. Nevertheless, they are armed.

The documentary team take drone footage of the long metal fence. NRT told DW that the fence is an anti-poaching measure aimed at rhino conservation. But land inside the fence is included in the carbon project. Satellite analysis reveals that the grassland inside the fence is greener than the land outside.

Free, prior and informed consent?

NRT says it held meetings with the communities and posted brochures on noticeboards to explain the proposed carbon project. But DW spoke to people who told them that “low literacy rates, high mobility, and limited access to mass media” meant that many of NRT’s efforts were questionable.

Many of the herders that DW spoke to were unaware that carbon offsets were being generated on their land. Others said they first heard about the project when money started coming to the conservancies — nine years after the project started.

NRT says that its authority to sell carbon offsets comes from the conservancies. But NRT faces an ongoing lawsuit alleging that the NRT’s establishment of conservancies on millions of hectares of Indigenous lands was unconstitutional.

“Most of these purported agreements were not subjected to public participation,” Innocent Makaka, a human rights lawyer, tells DW. Makaka is lead counsel on the case.

“We can call them private entities that have come to community land, and they have established conservancies and other activities in the community land at the expense of the community. But we have not seen anything filed that indicated that indeed, these community members, our clients, were involved. Yet these conservancies are established in their community limiting their land use one way or another. And that’s why we even went to court, because it’s our opinion that there is no legal basis.”

NRT declined to comment on the legal case.

Makaka’s 165 plaintiffs allege that the only written agreement the NRT has shown between themselves and the conservancies they helped establish was concluded nearly a decade after carbon credits were being sold.

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UPDATE — 28 January 2025: The Isiolo Environment and Land Court ruled that two of NRT’s biggest conservancies were set up unconstitutionally.

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“This community should be given the first priority”

Abdirahman Osman Dida is one of the plaintiffs. He travelled more than 500 kilometres to Nairobi to deliver a petition together with dozens of other residents of NRT conservancies. The petition to Kenya’s Parliament demands that their rights be upheld as constitutionally recognised owners of community lands.

Abdirahman says that,

“This community should be given the first priority. We are not opposing, but the style of the approach and the way they came to this community is completely, completely wrong.”

Mohammed Tubi is parliamentarian for Isiolo South Constituency. He tells DW that,

“NRT tried to behave as if they are the communities, which they are not the community. The communities are the land owners, the camel owners. These are the owners of the land. The communities are not getting benefit from these ones. They are being raped. They are being cheated.”

Tubi is a member of the Pastoralist Parliamentary group. They “point to a lack of transparency and participatory decision making in the way that carbon offsets are generated and sold,” DW reports.

Tubi adds that,

“That is theft. Because if you don’t inform the communities and the communities are not aware of what you are doing, then that is stealing. I am talking to Netflix and even Facebook. Some of these guys, please stop being used by people who are thieves. Those guys are not the genuine ones. They are con people. Let them not be used to rape the community of their property. . . .

“My message to the big investors: When they want to get carbon credits, let them go to the community and see it through the national government and the counties. So they should go to the community themselves and benefit the community directly rather than going through NRT and others.”

Who profits?

Sales of carbon offsets from the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project have brought in a lot of money. DW reports that this has funded student scholarships, waterpoints, and tourist infrastructure. But NRT has never published audited annual sales accounts.

The project claims on its website that it can “generate hundreds of millions of dollars for local communities”. Survival International estimates that somewhere between US$21 million and US$45 million worth of carbon credits have been sold.

“But very little is actually getting to the communities,” DW reports.

According to project documents, 30% goes as “marketing fees” to a US-based for-project company called Native. Verra takes a commission (currently US$0.23) on every carbon credit that it certifies. Another chunk goes on fees for soil scientists and consulting firms. A 5% cut goes to Kenya’s county governments. The remaining funds go to the NRT itself.

NRT keeps 40% for what it calls “operations costs” — hiring guards, building fences, and managing wildlife for international tourists.

What’s left is divided equally between the 14 conservancies involved in the project. “Even from this meagre portion,” DW reports, “not a penny of carbon revenues is distributed directly to individual herders, households, or settlements. Instead, it’s retained in a common fund that conservancies have to submit bids to, in order to fund specific projects.”

The only contract governing this revenue is dated 24 June 2021, years after sales of carbon offsets had started.

Control of the money is in the hands of NRT — and far from the control of the communities. Paul Kesau, a resident in the Meibae Conservancy tells DW that,

“They should treat us, you know, as we are an equal partnership. But at the moment, whatever they are giving us, it’s as if it is a favour. But no, we are the owners of the land.”

Shot dead

Solomon Lempatu does not know what a carbon credit is. But he tells DW that his father was shot dead for grazing the family’s animals in the wrong place.

Lempatu tells DW that,

“I didn’t now that it was wrong to take the cattle there. I went knowing nothing about the area being off limits and took the cattle inside. For me, I thought as long as I remain with the cattle it would be alright, because I was still young.

“When my father came, he found the cattle there. As he was running taking them out of the unwanted side of the boundary, they arrived. And before even asking why he took them in, he was simply shot. That is how he died.”

His mother Noolkilelu says that,

“The cattle we had perished without anyone to help us. The children were young at that time. Imagine, there is grass there, but they won’t allow the cattle to eat it. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when there is grass, cattle are allowed to graze?”

There have been many allegations of lethal force by rangers against herders. In its report about NRT, the Oakland Institute quoted from a 2019 report by a coalition of organisations called Missing Voices that aims to end enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Kenya:

Isiolo is well known for its conservation activities that take place within Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and Meru National Park. Within these spaces the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) operate and police the area. What is omitted within the characterization of these entities are their “shoot to kill” policies that enforce the view that preservation of wildlife is inherently more important than human life. The NRT is an umbrella organization for many nonprofit conservation groups which are heavily funded and controlled by Western states. As a result, there is a serious lack of national oversight that again maintains a culture of impunity with a lack of structure in place to hold officers accountable. KWS operates in a similar manner.

Innocent Makaka, the human rights lawyer, tells DW that,

“Many people have been killed because basically you are arming people without the regulation of government. These armed rangers, for example, prevent community members from grazing in certain areas. And we have people who have to, you know, leave their cultural sites, their graves, their cultural practices, and have to move to other areas. So this brings human rights issues.”

“What do they have to hide?”

DW’s documentary team is invited by the staff and elders of Melako Conservancy to visit their ranger station, to see how the rangers carry out their work. As they drive to the filming location, Robert Furfur, the head of security at Melako Conservancy rings them up.

“We can’t allow you to come and take pictures,” he says. “The chairman doesn’t have authority to allow you to come and take pictures.”

He explains that if a visitor comes to his office, “I must be given an email from NRT.”

DW’s reporter, Daniel Plafker, comments to Mario Kuraki, the Samburu language translator:

“They are saying that the conservancy is community-controlled. That the board of the conservancy, the council of elders, are elected; that they are the ones in charge of this place and in charge of the rangeland management. We have direct permission from Mzee Dokhole, who is the chairman of the board. He’s the one who supposedly has the authority from the community to govern the affairs of the conservancy. And although he’s encouraging us to go and document this, we’re being told by the NRT, that the NRT needs to grant permission before any photos can be taken, before any access can be given. This is a contradiction.

“What do they have to hide?”

Another call comes minutes later. It’s Boniface Mulee, Sub-County Criminal Investigations Officer. “Somebody has raised a complaint,” he says. “The manager of the conservancy is complaining. He’s saying you might expose some confidential matters outside.”

After the call, Plafker comments that,

“This tells me that what we’ve been told about who is in charge of this land and the management of its rangelands is not matching up with what we’re experiencing on the ground.”

The burned out safari lodge

DW speaks to Wilfred Longlei. He was chair of Melako Conservancy’s board from 2013 to 2016 when the carbon project began. Together with Singida Lekuton, a current board member, show them what has happened to one of the conservancy’s projects.

They go to a now abandoned luxury safari lodge for international tourists. It was built before the carbon project funds arrived. At least six similar resorts have been built or renovated using carbon funds.

The safari resort DW visits burned down in 2022.

Wilfred receives a phone call before he can tell his story. “Listen to me now, those people need to leave!” the voice tells Wilfred. “Tell them to get out of there.”

Wilfred tells DW he was asked, “Why have I taken visitors here without a letter from the NRT?”

After the phone call, Wilfred says the fire was an accident.

Then rangers from a nearby camp appear and tell DW to stop filming. By the time they get back to Merille, to their car, the sun has gone down. Someone passes them a handwritten note, which states that the burning of the resort was not an accident.

“That lodge was burnt on purpose. It was no accident. They were burnt by human hands. I am asking those contributors who are giving money for this carbon not to send any money here again,” one villager tells DW anonymously.

Another says that,

“Our leaders are misusing that money. Our fathers, mothers, elders, our illiterate people — nobody knows about carbon. They’ve heard about carbon but they don’t know what that is.”

And another says that,

“I want you to change my voice and hide my face. So our leaders will not know who I am. They can ‘look after’ you. They might take you into court, or even you can be kidnapped, or even killed.”