Carbon projects threaten a land grab of Maasai territory in Northern Tanzania

The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance is calling for a five-year moratorium on soil carbon projects.

The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance published a report this week about soil carbon credit projects on Maasai land in Northern Tanzania. The report looks at two projects: The Longido and Monduli Rangelands Carbon Project (LMRCP) by Soils for the Future Tanzania; and The Resilient Tarangire Ecosystem Project (RTEP) by The Nature Conservancy.

This post highlights the publication of the report, which can be downloaded here. Future posts on REDD-Monitor will look at the projects involved, the problems associated with developing the projects, and the impacts on Maasai pastoralist livelihoods.

Members of the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance include the aid organisation Misereor, the human rights organisation FIAN, and the Society for Threatened Peoples.

Five-year moratorium on soil carbon projects

Based on the findings in Tanzania, the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance is calling for a five-year moratorium on all soil carbon deals in pastoralists’ rangelands in Northern Tanzania. The moratorium is “to allow for comprehensive community education, adequate regulatory frameworks at both national and international levels”, as well as to “safeguard Maasai rights and pastoralist land use practices”.

The key findings of the report are as follows:

• Lack of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC): The FPIC process is deeply flawed, with limited community participation, exclusion of women and youth, and non-transparent agreements. Community members often lack basic knowledge of carbon markets, contract terms, and their implications.

• Disruption to Pastoralism and Mobility: Carbon projects introduce rotational grazing practices that will restrict traditional Maasai grazing patterns, undermining pastoral mobility — a cornerstone of Maasai culture and rangeland sustainability. These changes risk compromising food security and adaptive strategies against climate change.

• Regulatory Gaps and Corruption: Tanzania’s carbon trading regulations lack provisions to adequately protect our human rights as Indigenous Peoples in soil carbon projects. The absence of a binding and clear legal framework has led to community misinformation, corruption (e.g., pre-payments or “dowry money”), and legal ambiguities, especially regarding contract termination and benefit-sharing mechanisms.

• Community Concerns: Maasai communities are under strong pressure to enter into deals, because the two competing carbon project proponents are racing to submit their respective projects to validation by international standards. For this, they must sign with a minimum number villages, complete their project document and show evidence of consent. Communities fear long-term land use restrictions, loss of communal grazing areas, intra- and inter-community conflicts, and cultural erosion. The prospect of 40-year carbon contracts has raised alarms about locking future generations into potentially harmful agreements.

• Land Alienation Threats: Soil carbon projects risk repeating historical patterns of land dispossession for the Maasai, with community land being controlled by foreign investors and grazing areas being privatized for false climate solutions.

The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance concludes that the soil carbon credit business in Northern Tanzania risks becoming a land grab. The projects threaten the cultural heritage, livelihoods, and food security of Maasai pastoralists.

The projects could exacerbate existing land conflicts, create community tensions, and undermine climate justice.

In addition, there is no scientific evidence that the changes to Maasai grazing practices to be imposed by the projects will result in additional carbon storage — meaning yet more junk carbon credits.

Maasai Conservation Vision

In 2024, the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance published a “Maasai Conservation Vision”. The vision promotes an alternative to the colonial, fortress, violent, and capitalist conservation model that has been imposed on Maasai communities.

The vision includes a section on the development of carbon credit projects in Maasai territory. The Maasai have received “conflicting, contradictory and insufficient information and training on the opportunities, challenges and threats associated with carbon credit initiatives”.

Some communities have signed contracts without the full consideration and participation by villagers affected by the carbon projects. It raises concerns of land grabbing, adding to the pressure on their livelihoods from conservation areas, wildlife corridors, game reserves, game-controlled areas, hunting blocks, and forest reserves.

The vision is opposed to carbon offsetting as a “substitute for reducing carbon emissions in the Global North”.

The vision includes a list of requirements to avoid negative impacts from carbon projects, including:

• Maintaining access to water, grazing areas, firewood, sacred sites, and maintaining traditional knowledge and land-use practices;

• Land rights must be respected;

• Free, prior and informed consent must be ensured at all stages of the development of carbon projects. No agreements should be signed without the full involvement of all members of the community;

• Contracts, financial flows, and complaint mechanisms must be clear and transparent, along with the roles and responsibilities of the organisations and individuals involved;

• Carbon project proponents must provide details of benefit sharing schemes; and

• Social and environmental safeguards must be in place to ensure that carbon projects do not affect pastoral land-use systems, community culture and traditional land-use practices.

One of the villagers told the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance researchers that,

“Whatever project comes to our villages, we need to be involved. We, the villagers need to be in the driving seat of a project and need to know what it is all about. We need to know the advantages and disadvantages and need to be able to decide on our own.”