Investigative report on the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project in Tanzania: “This is a new form of colonialism”

"Very few Hadzabe understand the carbon project.”

PHOTO Credit: Janneke Juffermans.

The Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project in Tanzania covers an area of 110,000 hectares of dryland forest in northern Tanzania. Part of the project area is the territory of the Indigenous Hadza hunter-gatherers, who have lived in the Yaeda Valley area for 40,000 years. In 2021, the land of nine Datoga pastoralist communities was added to the project area, connecting the Yaeda Valley to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

The Hadzabe are one of the last groups of hunter-gatherers in Africa. They emit very little CO₂. The little personal property they have, such as a cooking pot, a water container, and an ax, can be wrapped in a blanket and carried. They share everything. They do not own cars, fridges, or televisions. They live on honey, tubers, and fruit, and meat, especially in the dry season. They do not cut down trees.

Recently, Marcel Hooft van Huysduynen and Janneke Juffermans, journalists with the Dutch publication Trouw, travelled to the Yaeda Valley to investigate this REDD project.

A company called Carbon Tanzania started the Yaeda REDD project in 2012. The company was founded by two British people living in Tanzania, Marc Baker and Jo Anderson. A company called Carbon Tanzania UK Ltd was incorporated in the UK in March 2018. In May 2023, the company was renamed as wearelevel Ltd which apparently calls itself Level.

Another company, CT Limited, was incorporated in Tanzania in August 2013. That company is a 98%-owned subsidiary of Level.

The project is registered with the Edinburgh-based certification company Plan Vivo. Many of the carbon credits from the project are sold through the Swiss carbon offset broker MyClimate.

Luxury safari company

One of the companies buying carbon credits from Carbon Tanzania, Trouw reports, is luxury safari company Singita. The company owns 19 lodges, camps, and villas in “Africa’s most sought-after wilderness areas” in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Botswana.

Singita is co-owned by Paul Tudor Jones, a US billionaire hedge fund manager. The company claims that, “Carbon offsetting allows our guests as well as our business to mitigate the impact of emissions.”

This is patent nonsense. When the rich guests fly to Tanzania, and then by private plane to stay in Singita’s luxury lodge, with its tennis courts, fitness and wellness centre, and infinity pool, the emissions from burning fossil fuels go into the atmosphere and stay there for as much as one thousand years.

Buying carbon offsets may help to preserve forests in the Yaeda Valley, but there is no way of guaranteeing that those trees will remain standing for one thousand years. And even in the best case scenario, it would take decades for the growth of those trees to absorb the CO₂ from Singita’s operations and their guests’ greenhouse gas emissions.

Other buyers of Yaeda Valley carbon credits include the British billionaire family Grosvenor. Among other things, they offset the construction of a shopping centre in London. The German aviation corporation Lufthansa also buys carbon credits from Carbon Tanzania.

Marginalisation of the Hadzabe

Trouw’s article starts with three Hadza hunters smoking a joint at six in the morning before going hunting. They find a troop of baboons, but couldn’t reach them because an elephant was in the way. They manage to shoot a guinea fowl.

The hunters tell Trouw’s journalist that their territory is getting drier and there is less wildlife. The hunters are unaware that Carbon Tanzania is selling carbon credits from their territory.

There are only about one thousand Hadzabe left. Of these, only somewhere between 150 and 200 still live from hunting and gathering. Most depend on agriculture and tourism. They have lost more than 90% of their territory in recent decades.

Since the project expanded in 2021 to include Datoga pastorists the Hadzabe have been a minor player in the project.

In 2006, the Hadzabe faced eviction at the hands of a safari company from the United Arab Emirates called the Eshkesh Safari Company. The company withdrew in November 2007.

An organisation called the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) helped the Hadzabe in their campaign against the UAE safari company. UCRT was set up by Daudi, Mike, and Thad Peterson, three US brothers who were raised in Tanzania. They had also set up an ecotourism company called Dorobo Safaris — UCRT was aimed at helping villagers and Indigenous communities secure legal title to their territories.

In February 2010, Trouw writes, Carbon Tanzania and UCRT started working together. In October 2010, Carbon Tanzania told the Hadzabe about the proposed carbon project in a two-day meeting with over 270 Hadzabe present.

In October 2011, UCRT helped to secure land rights for the Hadzabe over part of their traditional territory.

At the time, both organisations received funding from The Nature Conservancy, which is, as Trouw points out, “a fervent supporter of carbon projects”. The Nature Conservancy also runs several of its own forest carbon projects. In 2020, Bloomberg criticised The Nature Conservancy’s US projects for selling “meaningless carbon offsets”.

Simon Counsell, ex-director of Rainforest Foundation UK, is concerned that the threat of deforestation in the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project area is exaggerated. Counsell tells Trouw that,

“It is very questionable whether the generated carbon credits are the result of actually prevented CO₂ emissions.”

Predictably enough, Carbon Tanzania says it “neither overestimates nor underestimates” the threat of deforestation.

How much do communities actually get from the project?

Carbon Tanzania hires village game scouts who monitor the area and report to local authorities and UCRT if forest is being cut down. Trouw writes that Carbon Tanzania get 40% of the money from carbon credit sales and the Hadzabe community gets 60%. The Hadzabe spend the money mainly on education and health care.

Carbon Tanzania sells most of its credits to an intermediary, such as MyClimate. These intermediaries sell the credits for more money to end users.

In 2023, Carbon Market Watch put out a report titled “Secretive Intermediaries”. The report found that 90% of intermediaries do not disclose their fees.

Neither Carbon Tanzania nor MyClimate make their prices public.

But the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project’s 2022 report includes the price that MyClimate paid to Carbon Tanzania: €4.75 per credit. “The figures were made public unintentionally,” Carbon Tanzania tells Trouw.

An email from MyClimate to a potential customer, seen by Trouw, reveals that a credit from the Hadzabe project costs more than €31. Trouw writes that,

Asked why there is such a big difference, a MyClimate spokesperson says that this is “not the right question.” He says that prices vary by project, and that the price of a carbon credit from the Hadzabe project is “significantly lower” than the email says. But how much lower, he won’t say. There is enough information publicly available to find out, he says. “This is not a black box!”

“A new form of colonialism”

Trouw’s journalists speak to Nathaniel Rugh, a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is also a member of Global Environmental Justice Atlas team. Rugh tells Trouw that Indigenous communities often don’t understand what they’re getting into. Rugh says that,

“The Hadzabe could not have made an informed decision without this basic knowledge of carbon projects and their risks. Would they have agreed if they understood that carbon credit projects could potentially fuel climate change and contribute to more heat and drought in their habitat?”

The 2012 validation report confirms that the Hadzabe did not fully understand the project:

“While the process of developing the village land-use plans and the contract with Carbon Tanzania was participatory and communities were supported by UCRT, prominent members of the Hadzabe community (and Carbon Tanzania field coordinators) feel that they don't understand REDD well enough to properly advise their fellow community members.”

A 2015 interview with Richard Baalow, by Ecosystem Marketplace also reveals that the Hadzabe did not fully understand carbon trading. The validation report describes Baalow as “UCRT community coordinator for Yaeda Valley, ward development officer, and Hadzabe community member in Mbulu town”. When asked about how he plans to sell his carbon offsets to corporations, Baalow says, “Those are things of your white people.”

A worker at a local NGO, who asked to remain anonymous because of possible repercussions, tells Trouw that,

“Very few Hadzabe understand the carbon project. This is a new form of colonialism.”