Cows, Carbon and Conflict: The Uneasy Coexistence of Climate Projects and Community Rights in Northern Kenya

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant.

 In Kenya’s rugged north, where the effects of climate change are vivid and dire, Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), an organization developing sustainable community conservancies has pioneered an innovative carbon off-set project. Amidst the closure of two of NRT’s 45 conservancies by court and suspension of its project by a carbon credit certifier, a community in Merti blames the organization for cattle rustling as a result of the impacts of the conservancies.

 By: Anthony Langat
Photos: Diana Takacsova

A dirt road stretches ten kilometers north of Merti town in Isiolo to the village of Lakole, an expansive plain nestled between huge cliffs. On a Saturday morning in early May, hundreds of white goats and sheep grazed the plain, enjoying the abundance of pasture following the plentiful April rains.

In the beautifully spread plains of Lakole lurks death. It is evident beside the dirt road, as you approach the village, where a small graveyard is fenced out with thorn tree branches. On that morning, one of the graves was still fresh with red soil heaped up to about two feet. Inside, lay thirty-year-old Abdi Roba, laid to rest three days earlier. He had been killed by a gunshot to his head in a ruthless ambush by rustlers targeting his cattle and goats while away herding a few kilometers out of the village. 

The late Roba’s mud-walled and tin-roof house sits in the middle of the village. His wife, Fatuma Rokicha was still in mourning. Appearing weakly and sad, and her eyes red from crying, she lay on a carpet next to her sister and nephew, her gaze on the earth in front of her. Outside, her other sister, neighbors and relatives sat chatting in low tones while others peeled potatoes for lunch.

Rokicha heard that her husband’s killers were Samburu raiders who had been laying siege for days. He had taken his livestock to a big borehole in Dogogicha when he was killed. “They shot him near a shallow well in Dogogicha and they didn’t take any livestock. His friends brought his body back to the village,” said Rokicha. Villagers feared that the raiders still lurked in Dogogicha and could strike Lakole any time.

In Isiolo and other counties in Kenya’s north,  many community conservancies have been set up in community lands in recent years, and joined a large soil-based carbon credit programme dubbed Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project implemented by the Northern Rangelands Trust, (NRT), an NGO focused on developing sustainable community conservancies. NRT has been accused of spearheading the establishment of conservancies without due process of public participation involving communities. Now, communities in Merti are blaming NRT for the deadly cattle rustling activities which they say have been enabled by the arming of wardens in the established conservancies leading to deaths and loss of livestock.

Merti town with its few dozen shops, predominantly inhabited by the Borana sits below a hill, overlooked by a barely used catholic church. The town has been choked by Mathenge, an invasive thorny tree which has made the town a lush green from afar.

Livestock and wildlife roam the plains in the outskirts of town with abandon and it is this wild side of Merti that attracted the NRT to establish community conservancies in the area. Until January this year, NRT had two community conservancies in Merti -Chirab and Biliqo Bulessa-under its fold of multiple conservancies across the country. Like in other areas of Isiolo and other counties in Kenya’s north like Marsabit, Turkana, Samburu, land is held communally.

NRT’s proposal to the communities was for them to set aside some land and establish conservancies from which they could earn income from tourism activities. Additionally, they would utilize the rangelands in a way that would earn them carbon credits through the Northern Kenya Rangeland Carbon Project. According to NRT, the process was transparent and community-led and that the communities organized themselves in community-based organizations and set up community conservancies. Netflix and Meta are among the organizations that have reportedly purchased carbon credits from the project.  

In Merti however, the establishment of Cherab and BiliqoBulessa Community Conservancies were vehemently opposed and in 2023, chaos erupted leading to the burning of conservancy offices set up by the Northern Rangelands Trust. One person was injured in the melee. “They had only ten people in the committee in the entire Merti sub-county. They held their meetings in people’s houses and selected the chairman and the other officials among themselves and the community rejected them. There was no transparency and no accountability,” said Mohamed Boru, a retired Chief. 

What followed was a court case brought to court by Abdirahman Osman and other community members against the establishment of the conservancies. “We wouldn’t have a problem with carbon credit, if it would have come procedurally. We don’t have a problem with conservation either. But the process it came with was completely fraudulent,” said Abdirahman Osman, a leader with Waso Paralegal Network, an advocacy group.

Two years after the petition was filed at the Isiolo Environment and Lands Court, the ruling was made in favor of the community. The establishment of the conservancies in Cherab and Charri wards was deemed illegal as it didn’t involve the community in its establishment and that the community land had not been duly registered.

The victory in court was sweet for the majority of residents in Merti. The ruling enabled them to freely graze their livestock in their rangelands amongst the wildlife. Had the establishment of the two conservancies been upheld, Halkano Galgalo, 62, a resident of Merti, said that the community wouldn’t have enough pasture for their livestock.

In the few years that the conservancies were established in Merti, residents said armed guards patrolled in NRT-branded vehicles denying herders entry into rangelands that they have grazed their livestock in for generations. Galgalo said that according to a map of the proposed conservancies in Merti that he saw, very little land was left for grazing. “Our community depends on livestock and if there is no land, where will their livestock graze?” he posed.

Apart from the grazing areas, there are other culturally significant areas that the communities had been denied access to due to the conservancies. “There are burial sites like Bule-Resture, there is Kira, there is Robsentu, and many others. All these are within Chari and Chirab,” said Osman. He added that even after the conservancy activities were stopped by the court, armed people continued to occupy some areas making it difficult for the communities to access some of the burial sites.

Osman referred to them as militia under the instruction of NRT to occupy the land in Merti not to protect wildlife but with the intention to scare away the Boranas and grab the land. 

Galgalo is convinced that these attackers who kill and rob them of livestock use guns provided for the protection of wildlife in the established community conservancies. “They use the guns to rob us of our livestock. It is these guns that are giving us problems,” he said.

Some villagers at Lokale had already left while others were planning to leave.

Osman Koricha, who had lived in the village for twenty years, was certain that the next few days would be bad. He expressed frustration with the administration saying that they had reached out to the Sub-County Commissioner at Merti for protection without success. “They don’t care about us at all,” he said.

Fatuma Rokicha had planned to ask relatives to take care of her livestock for her and she would flee to Onbato with her children. That is where they had fled to previously when there was a similar attack. She said that she would stay there until it was calm before she went back to Lakole.

Mohamed Shibia, an NRT carbon director denied any issuance of guns by NRT to conservancies. He said that there is no such thing as ‘conservancy warden guns’. “These are part of the national police system and fall under the Police Act, not under the Carbon Project or its implementing partners. NPRs (National Police Reservists) may be based within conservancies, but their oversight, training, and deployment are entirely the responsibility of the Kenya Police Service,” he said. 

Geoffrey Omoding, the County Commissioner shared Shibia’s sentiments denying any knowledge of NRT-issued guns to protect conservancies. The government issues guns to National Police Reservists to help in beefing up security in far-flung areas in the north.  “These are just normal raids of cattle rustling. The criminals have networks from Laisamis, Samburu East, Laikipia and some of them from ol Donyiro side. It has nothing to do with carbon credits or communities. These are just criminals looking for livestock. We are dealing with it,” he said.

Osman, Galgalo and Boru, all of whom are residents of Merti, however believe that the wardens who protected the Chari and Cherab in addition to those protecting Biliqo-Bulesa are private wardens under the payroll of NRT and used NRT-provided vehicles.

The NRT project was suspended a second time by Vera following the January ruling.  NRT’s Mohamed Shibia however said that the suspension was a temporary pause of credit issuance to allow for a procedural Section 6 review following the ruling. He was confident that the suspension will be lifted. “The project remains certified, community operations continue, and legal agreements remain in force. It’s worth noting that a similar Section 6 review in 2023 was completed with no fundamental flaws found—only procedural recommendations, which the project addressed. We expect a similar outcome this time,” he said.

While commenting on the suspension, Survival International’s Caroline Pearce said that the NRT carbon credits scheme has violated Indigenous rights from the start, and has now become a complete fiasco. “It’s impossible to understand how it was approved by Verra in the first place, and it should now be scrapped once and for all – along with the whole idea of violating Indigenous people’ rights to generate carbon credits,” she said.

While the NRT project was established in 2012, carbon credit projects in Kenya are increasing by the day. A recent statement by the President’s Special Envoy on Climate Change Amb. Ali Mohamed stated that there are over 400 carbon credit projects in Kenya. Free, prior and informed consent is integral especially as most of these projects are established in indigenous community lands. As one study aptly puts it, “direct violations to indigenous peoples’ free, prior, and informed consent with carbon-related projects, or blatant disregard of valid carbon-related agreements with indigenous peoples have been increasingly documented.”

Kenya recently enacted regulations to govern carbon markets and it is envisioned that this may help address issues like the ones faced by the people of Merti and others affected by carbon credit projects. The regulations which provide a framework for participation in both voluntary and compliance markets, have clearly not been implemented yet at the project level to address issues of free prior and informed consent. In Merti, Osman said that no government official has visited the area to investigate the project. Attempts to get comment on the implementation of the carbon market regulations in the country from Dr. Festus Ngeno the Principal Secretary for Environment were unsuccessful.

As countries prepare for COP30 in Brazil where it is expected that impacts of carbon credit projects will be key in the agenda as Article 6 will feature prominently. In a recent carbon markets conference in Nairobi, Amb. Mohamed said that the success of carbon markets depends on how well they reflect local priorities and empower local actors. “We must move from treating communities and youth as beneficiaries to engaging them as partners and co-owners,” he said. 

On his part, Osman and his fellow community members are angered by the organization’s alleged lobbying for the legitimization of all community conservancies in Isiolo and other counties in Northern Kenya by sponsoring bills in the county assemblies. “If you go through that community conservancy bill, the theme of the bill is to legitimize and legalize all existing community conservancies. Irrespective of whether they followed the law in their establishment. So, if the county assembly could have passed that bill successfully, they can claim to have legitimacy,” said Osman.

For now, they await the ruling of an appeal filed by NRT asking to have the two conservancies reinstated. Osman is confident that it will be thrown out again. He however said that the community isn’t opposed to carbon credit projects but wants to be involved in the project. “In the first place, a community-owned conservancy should have the initiative, the dreams, and the ideas of the community. Or, the community should be sensitized on the same and it is up to the community to organize themselves to opt-out or to understand and get the idea and work on it,” he said.