Indigenous Ogiek communities are being violently evicted for carbon credits in Kenya
Indigenous Ogiek communities are being violently evicted for carbon credits in Kenya
“The Ogiek are on the front line of a false climate solution that is used to justify ongoing evictions and emissions.”
The Kenyan government is evicting Indigenous Ogiek communities from their homes in the Mau Forest. The evictions are illegal. In 2017, the Ogiek won an important land rights victory when the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that the Ogiek have the right to live in the Mau Forest.
This was followed in 2022 with a reparations judgment from the African Court. The judgment ordered the Kenyan government to
Undertake a process of delimiting, demarcation and titling of Ogiek ancestral land, within which the Ogiek fully participate, within a timeframe of 1 year of notification of the reparations order;
Ogiek “living in absolute fear”
On 2 November 2023, the Ogiek community in Sasimwani, Mau Forest, woke up to find that Kenyan authorities had arrived to evict them from their lands.
“We are living in absolute fear,” Daniel Kobei, the executive director of the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Programme, told The Guardian.
“The first day they started bringing down houses using axes, hammers and pangas [machetes]. They brought down the school, and on the second day they even started burning some houses. Now, they have gone back with heavy machines to bring down houses that were not completely destroyed . . . They are really bringing down everything.”
Elisabeth Nguliso told the Ogiek Peoples Development Programme that she woke to find rangers pulling down homes.
“We tried to ask for time to remove our property from the houses. They refused - we do not know where to go.
“We ask the Kenyan government to remember us, to give us back our lands, this will also help them conserve the other areas. If you tell me to leave, I do not know where I will go.”
Carbon credits are “key”
The Mau Forest forms one of ten upland watersheds, called “water towers”. On 30 September 2023, at the funeral of Maasai leader Mzee Titame ole Sankei, Kenya’s President William Ruto announced that the government would “fence all the water towers”.
Ruto issued an ultimatum to everyone living in the water towers to leave, with immediate effect.
Justin Kendrick, of Forest Peoples Programme, told the BBC that carbon credits and offsetting were “key” to what’s happening in the Mau Forest. By evicting the Ogiek, the government is attempting to cement its full control over the land.
Kendrick said that,
“Those in control of Africa's forests stand to earn a lot of money.
“The Mau is Kenya’s biggest forest and in our view it’s clear that the interest shown by offsetting companies is prompting the Kenyan Government to assert its control.
“The Ogiek are on the front line of a false climate solution that is used to justify ongoing evictions and emissions.”
United Arab Emirates and Blue Carbon LLC
In October 2023, Kenya’s State Department of Environment and Climate Change signed a Framework of Collaboration with the United Arab Emirates carbon offsetting firm, Blue Carbon. This is one of several carbon deals that Blue Carbon has signed with governments in Africa and elsewhere, covering vast areas of land.
On 25 October 2023, Blue Carbon announced the carbon deal with Kenya “for the development of REDD+ projects and the origination of carbon credits, for millions of hectares of project area”.
But when the BBC asked Blue Carbon about the evictions, the company said it did “not have any ongoing projects in Kenya”. BBC journalist Claire Marshall wrote that,
Blue Carbon referred to Article 6 of the Paris climate agreement, saying a process was “not eligible” if indigenous communities or vulnerable groups would be displaced.
Minority Rights Group International has been working with the Ogiek to support their rights since 2009. At a media briefing yesterday, Samuel Ade Ndasi of Minority Rights Group said that, “It is difficult not to link the evictions of the Ogiek to the government of Kenya’s recent romance with carbon credit funding.”
Evicting people from their homelands is disgraceful. Doing so in the misguided and ineffective goal of carbon credits is even more disgraceful.
The Business types say: "in every crisis there is opportunity." So in the climate crisis they find opportunity: money! The large financiers, the rentier class, have woven a blanket of obscurity over their intricate dealings to turn this climate disaster into a cash cow. If that requires "fortress conservation," so be it - they do the same thing in cities before every Olympic Games, clear out the undesirables and build shiny new venues, reminiscent of the Crystal Palace. Sag mir wo die Blumen sind - when will they ever learn?