Africa’s Carbon Deals Must Serve Those Most Vulnerable to the Climate Crisis

Carbon markets have all the allure of a new investment option—mainly, that they have not failed yet. The idea of paying for conservation activities to offset polluting industrial activities, and then trading credits for those activities, sounds like a win-win solution to the climate crisis. But, in practice today, it looks like fool’s gold. That may be why the European Union included “carbon offsets” in new regulations that limit the use of sustainability buzzwords in promotional activities.

Several mega-transactions negotiated recently in tropical forested countries in sub-Saharan Africa place a spotlight on who is missing from these market opportunities—the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that have, against all odds, kept the forests intact. Although these carbon credit deals were announced last year, they have yet to be finalized and, instead, their grassroots opposition has gained traction.

The deals in question exemplify the 95 agreements announced since 2021, according to the consulting firm MSCI. They involve the governments of five countries, which agreed to hand over the development rights to sizable portions of their lands to a single international investment firm, UAE-based Blue Carbon—despite protests from those living on the lands in question.

For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities.

These transactions would cover 20% of the land in Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia and Zambia, 8% of Tanzania, and an undisclosed amount of land in Kenya. Blue Carbon would effectively gain control over the carbon stored in the soils and forests of these lands, which in effect surrenders control over the development rights to these lands.

Blue Carbon also started negotiations to acquire carbon rights with governments in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest tropical forest, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo.

In the short term, everyone—except for the Indigenous, pastoralist, and local communities who live on and claim these lands—can be expected to profit from these investments. In the long term, however, all will bear their costs.

For generations, these communities have sustainably managed their land and forests and hold primary responsibility for the carbon-rich ecosystems that make up the lion’s share of transactions in the carbon markets. But despite their contributions, they have limited means of ensuring that their rights will not be superseded by foreign investors claiming ownership of the carbon stored in their lands.

In eastern Kenya, for example, the Ogiek people have long faced threats of eviction and expulsion from their territories in the Mau forest—the largest high-altitude forest in East Africa. Recent evictions, with forest rangers destroying villages, have been connected to potential carbon rights transactions. This is despite national laws recognizing communities’ ownership to more than two thirds of this land.

In Liberia, communities worked tirelessly to pass one of the strongest laws protecting community land rights worldwide in 2018. At the time, we estimated that 40% of Liberia’s land had already been handed over in natural resource deals—for industrial palm oil plantations, mining, and timber extraction. The Blue Carbon deal would take an additional 10% from what is left—shrugging off the 2018 law’s protections.

A growing body of research directly connects strong Indigenous and communities’ land rights with lower rates of deforestation and forest degradation, which are significant contributors to global carbon emissions. The United Nations’ most recent report on climate change emphasizes community rights as a bulwark in climate change mitigation and adaptation. And the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasizes the importance of respecting these rights in efforts to stave off rapid biodiversity loss.

In a world where tropical deforestation has yet to be tamed— we lost 50% more tropical forest in 2022 than we did 20 years ago—we cannot ignore the potential of carbon markets to improve conservation outcomes. But their benefits must reach the communities who are the primary custodians of these lands.

These carbon deals have been negotiated without meaningful community participation. And the lack of transparency on the terms and conditions of the contracts hides the implications for people and nature.

For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities. They need to ensure access to objective, complete, transparent, and locally adapted information about the transactions and the lands they cover. The communities’ rights to free, prior, and informed consent must be upheld, and their effective and meaningful participation in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all transactions should be mandatory. Importantly, those who are impacted by these deals should have access to effective remedy.

These conditions should apply to carbon credit deals just as they apply to all natural resource concessions. Carbon markets must serve the interests of those who are most vulnerable to climate change, not those who created the crisis to begin with.