BBC Panorama documentary on the Kasigau REDD project in Kenya: Evictions, sexual harassment, and “dog training”

The Panorama documentary highlights the problems with this Wildlife Works REDD project.

The recent BBC Panorama documentary about the problems with REDD projects and carbon offsets includes a visit to the Kasigau REDD project in Kenya.

This is my second post in a series based on the Panorama documentary. The first post looks at the systemic problems in the REDD carbon credits industry revealed in the documentary:

The Kasigau REDD project was developed by Wildlife Works Carbon, LLC, a company incorporated in the tax haven of Delaware.

Today, the Kasigau REDD project covers an area of about 200,000 hectares, between two national parks - Tsavo West and Tsavo East. Wildlife Works says 120,000 people live in the project area. It says the project has created jobs, improved health care, funded new classrooms, and protected wildlife, including endangered species. The number of carbon credits generated has been “developed through rigorous scientific study”, according to Wildlife Works.

Mike Korchinsky on safari

In 1997, Mike Korchinsky, a US-based management consultant, took a 10-day holiday to a private reserve in Laikipia in central Kenya. In 2017, he told journalist Amy Yee that the European owner had a “small private army” to protect the wildlife from being hunted and to keep local communities from grazing their livestock on the reserve. Korchinsky calls this “fence-and-shoot” conservation.

“The seeds for changing my life happened on that vacation in Africa,” Korchinsky says. “The name Wildlife Works, which is the name of our company, came up during that trip. If you want wildlife in the future, you have to find a way to make it work for those people, because it’s their land.”

Korchinsky set up Wildlife Works and bought a majority of shares in the Rukinga ranch in southeastern Kenya.

Rukinga is one of the largest ranches in the area covering 30,000 hectares. At first the project was a tourism project. Wildlife Works also set up a clothing factory in the project area and marketed the clothes as “sustainable fashion”.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks damaged the tourism industry. Then the financial crisis in 2008 had an impact on Wildlife Works’ clothing sales. In 2010, Wildlife Works turned to REDD and carbon credits.

In a Wildlife Works promotional video, Korchinsky says that,

“The carbon market for us was a means to an end. We saw it as a financing mechanism for our conservation work, and a better way to achieve our mission.”

Korchinsky adds that, “Stopping the loss of natural forest is by far the most effective way to to slow climate change.”

Here, Korchinsky inadvertently reveals one of the fundamental problems with REDD and carbon trading. To address the climate crisis we have to stop burning fossil fuels. This isn’t controversial. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, pointed out at COP28 in December 2023,

“The science is clear: The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”

Wildlife Works’ reliance on the carbon market as a “financing mechanism” means selling carbon credits to corporations such as Shell, Delta Airlines, BHP, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Audi, Netflix, McKinsey, Microsoft, the International Finance Corporation, the European Investment Bank, Coca-Cola, Deliveroo, and Kering, the owner of fashion companies Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

These companies buy carbon credits to give the appearance of doing something to address the climate crisis, while greenwashing their on-going pollution.

Evictions

In 2021, Netflix bought almost 250,000 from the project. The following year, Netflix made a promotional video with Wildlife Works. Panorama looks at some of the claims and omissions in the video.

In 2002, before the REDD project started, the Waduruma ethnic group were evicted from Rukinga.

A 2016 paper published in the journal Land Use Policy documents the violence used to evict the Waduruma. One of the Waduruma who had been evicted told the researchers that,

“The eviction notice was abrupt and took us by surprise. . . . In 2002, we were violently evicted, all our possessions, including food grains, animals and clothes were thrown out of our houses, which were immediately torched by fire. We were more than 500 households in total. We organized ourselves in groups and hired lorries to salvage what we could, we put our animals, food and beddings in the lorries . . . whatever was left behind was lost in fire . . . We hate to be reminded and to talk about it.”

The Panorama documentary team spoke to members of the Waduruma community who were evicted. The Waduruma were evicted by the police and bailiffs after the Rukinga ranch owners went to the Kenyan High Court.

One member of the Waduruma community tells Panorama,

“I came here since 1965. We were tilling the land peacefully, cultivating our crops peacefully. But unfortunately Wildlife Works came and we were evicted. This is the line. People were evicted from this way, they came to this way. Some of the houses were fired with goats in. Some of them lost their riches.”

A Waduruma woman says that,

“When I was evicted, my house was full of maize. They burned it with the maize inside. Some of my chickens were inside. They were set on fire too. My life is ruined.”

A Wildlife Works ranger who stopped working for the company in 2012, was there when the evictions took place. He tells Panorama that,

“They had encroached on the company’s land and needed to be evicted. My fellow rangers were helping people remove their belongings from their houses. Once we were done with one person, we moved on to the next.”

He says that there were fires, but that they were started accidentally.

“There was a cooking stove in one of the houses and when it was knocked over it started a fire. It hit the ground and burst into flames, but nobody struck a match.”

Obviously, the Netflix promotional video makes no mention of the evictions. Wildlife Works told Panorama that the company has never forcibly evicted anyone from their homes.

Widespread sexual harassment

The promotional video claims that Wildlife Works has made a big difference to the lives of local women. “A key part of this project is empowering women to take on vital roles in the community,” the Netflix video states.

Panorama speaks to a group of women who have all been employed by Wildlife Works. They all speak anonymously because they are worried about the impact on the community and their families.

Most of them were pleased to have the opportunity to work. One woman says,

“I felt good because having a job was so much better than it was before. My children were doing well in school and my salary was good for my family.”

But in November 2023, SOMO and the Kenya Human Rights Commission produced a report that documented “widespread sexual harassment and abuse” in the Kasigau REDD project.

Following the report, Kasigau had to suspend sales of carbon credits. Wildlife Works sacked two men.

Verra, the Washington-DC company that certified the Kasigau REDD project, announced that it would carry out a review of the project. On 1 February 2024, Verra reinstated the project. SOMO and KHRC describe Verra’s review as “A flawed review with harmful omissions.”

Panorama spoke to seven women who allege sexual harassment dating back a decade. One of the women says,

“I was sexually harassed. My boss tried to seduce me and I refused. From that day on he started hating me. He started doing so many things to me that made me feel like I’m nothing. I was about to resign, but I tried to be strong because if I left my job how would I earn a living? I have a family to take care of.”

Six of them mentioned a Wildlife Works employee called Eric. One of the women says,

“Any worker there will tell you about Eric’s behaviour. They say if you want to survive here, you have to have sex with him. I asked them what about you? Did you do the same? They said yes, to secure their jobs.”

Another woman tells Panorama,

“It was in the compound of Wildlife Works and to make it worse in the office. He came towards the door. He peaked outside to see if anyone was coming. There was no one there so he came towards me wanting to touch my breasts. And he did touch my breasts. I was a bit confused. How could it be? I just went to my house. Emotionally I was tortured.”

One woman tells Panorama that after she refused to sleep with him, he turned her attention to her daughter:

“Eric used to send my daughter messages saying he wanted to meet. He wanted to sleep with her. Me, from my side I couldn’t do it. That’s why he had a grudge against me.”

Eric Sagwe was Head Ranger and Head of Security for Wildlife Works. He appears in the Netflix video.

Sagwe was one of the men that Wildlife Works sacked after the SOMO and KHRC report was published. Sagwe says that the allegations against him are “entirely baseless and without merit” and that the allegations were orchestrated because of his ethnicity.

Wildlife Works has removed an interview with Sagwe from its website (an archived copy is available here). In 2016, on Facebook, Wildlife Works wrote that,

“Standing 6’5” our head ranger of 8 years Eric Sagwe was born to be the gentle giant kind of wildlife protector!”

World Rainforest Movement’s Jutta Kill tells Panorama that,

“What was interesting in the Wildlife Works response to the report was the attempt to deflate attention away to the from the company responsibility and saying, ‘Oh those were two Rogue individuals.’ How could that level of abuse happen for a decade and the company not noticing? That says a lot about the way the company was run.”

Wildlife Works says that it “acted immediately” as soon as it received SOMO and KHRC’s report and that Mike Korchinsky has apologised to the women directly affected. Wildlife Works says that it has “introduced measures” to prevent such misconduct happening again.

Money to local communities?

In 2011, Wildlife Works started selling carbon credits from the Kasigau REDD project. Since then, the project has generated more than 21 million carbon credits. The company now sells almost 2 million credits per year from Kasigau, according to Panorama.

The Netflix promotional video claims that when companies buy carbon credits from the Kasigau REDD project, “Over 70% of the proceeds go to the community where they vote on how they’re spent.”

Back in 2013, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation published a report about REDD. The Kasigau REDD project was one of the case studies that the report’s author, Göran Eklöf, investigated. Eklöf asked Wildlife Works for a copy of the agreement that the company made with local communities.

Eklöf writes in his report that,

“Wildlife Works agreed to share the document that regulates the terms of these arrangements with the communities, but has not done so in spite of repeated reminders.”

Panorama asked Wildlife Works about how the money is distributed. The company replied that in the nine years to 2023, its net revenue was US$90 million. Here’s how the company managed to come up with the 70% figure:

• US$30.9 million to forest land owners;

• US$25.8 million to community-based operations; and

• US$10 million to funding community projects that local people get to vote on.

Wildlife Works says that there are nearly 8,000 forest land owners. According to the company, its revenue share model is “one of the most generous in the industry”.

After Panorama wrote to Wildlife Works and Netflix, the Netflix promotional video has been removed from YouTube.

Dog training

The Panorama documentary shows footage from a presentation that Korchinsky gave in 2017 at a Code REDD event. In his presentation, Korchinsky described his approach to getting local communities and governments to work with his projects. He said it’s like training a dog:

“People in organisations do what they’re paid to do. OK, so kind of like the dog, right? I got a treat in my hand. I want you to sit down, you’re going to get the treat, right? So that works great. Dog sits down, give him the treat. Dog doesn’t sit down, don’t give him the treat.”

The Panorama documentary reports Korchinsky as saying that his comments were “intended as a frivolous way” to illustrate a “broader discussion” about “pay for performance”. He says his comments do not reflect his “respect for local communities, national governments, and other partners” and that he regrets any offence that may have been caused.

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