Blood Carbon: how a carbon offset scheme makes millions from Indigenous land in Northern Kenya

Survival International

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Abstract: The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) claims that its Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project (NKCP) is â??the worldâ??s largest soil carbon removal project to date and the first project generating carbon credits reliant on modified livestock grazing practicesâ?1. The project covers half of the four million hectares now included within NRTâ??s grouping of â??Conservanciesâ?? â?? areas which are notionally being managed for the benefit of wildlife as well as local people. Thirteen more-or-less contiguous conservancies are involved in the project. The area has more than 100,000 inhabitants, including indigenous Samburu, Maasai, Borana, and Rendille people. All are pastoralists, whose way of life is inseperably bound up with their livestock â?? principally cattle, but also camels, sheep and goats. Grazing typically follows local and regional rainfall, sometimes involving migration routes that may extend hundreds of kilometers. Grazing patterns are traditionally dictated by elders according to long-standing sets of rules, allowances and sanctions. The project, which started in January 2013, is based on the notion that replacing what it calls the traditional â??unplannedâ?? grazing with â??planned rotational grazingâ?? will allow vegetation in the area to (re)grow more prolifically. This in turn, the project claims, would result in greater storage of carbon in the conservanciesâ?? soils - averaging around three-quarters of a tonne of additional carbon per hectare per year. Thus the project would allegedly generate around 1.5 millions of tonnes of extra carbon â??storageâ?? per year, producing around 41 million net tonnes of carbon credits for sale over a 30-year project period. The gross value of these could be around US$300 million â?? US$500 million, but potentially much more.