As Kenya accelerates its push into global carbon markets, disputes are emerging across rangelands, forests and conservancies, raising questions about who benefits from carbon trading and who bears its costs.
Projects promoted as climate solutions are increasingly facing resistance from communities who say carbon initiatives are restricting livelihoods, fuelling land tensions and sidelining Indigenous people from decisions over their own land.
Brian Awuonda, an environmental law practitioner and Head of the Environment and Climate Justice Department at BBA Advocates, says many of these conflicts stem from a system that communities do not fully understand and are poorly equipped to negotiate.
“Carbon credits are essentially measurable units of climate action,” Awuonda said. “They represent carbon absorbed from the atmosphere or emissions prevented from entering it. Once quantified and certified, they become tradable permits that companies can buy to offset pollution.”
According to Awuonda, carbon markets are anchored in international climate frameworks such as the Kyoto Protocol and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which allows countries and companies to invest in emissions reduction projects, often in the Global South, and trade the resulting credits.
“Carbon credits are now traded like shares,” he said. “There are voluntary markets where prices fluctuate depending on perceived quality, and compliance markets where governments regulate trade.”
While Kenya has embraced carbon markets as a source of climate finance and conservation funding, Awuonda argues that weak regulation, power imbalances and limited community awareness have created space for mistrust and exploitation.
Across several regions, what is promoted as climate action is being questioned as a system where local communities shoulder the burden of global emissions while benefits flow elsewhere.
One of the most contested cases is the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project, which between 2023 and 2025 faced criticism over allegations that pastoralist communities were not fully involved in decision-making. Local leaders and activists said grazing restrictions linked to the project disrupted traditional mobility systems that are central to pastoral livelihoods. Similar disputes are coming up in Kajiado and Narok Counties.
The dispute has raised renewed questions over who controls carbon revenues generated on community land and how benefits are shared.
Among Maasai and other pastoralist groups, such concerns have increasingly been framed as “carbon colonialism”. Indigenous rights defenders argue that carbon markets allow external investors and conservation organisations to monetise ancestral land while placing new limits on grazing routes, seasonal movement and cultural practices.
Benefit from carbon revenues
Similar issues have been raised in the Kasigau REDD+ Project in Taita Taveta. Between 2023 and 2024, human rights organisations questioned labour conditions, accountability systems and the extent to which surrounding communities benefit from carbon revenues.
Earlier conservation disputes continue to shape today’s mistrust. The Sengwer eviction case, which gained international attention in 2017, remains one of the most cited examples of the tension between climate protection efforts and Indigenous land rights. Sengwer community members accused authorities of forcibly evicting them from Embobut Forest under conservation and climate programmes, despite their history as forest custodians.
Beyond land and livelihood concerns, questions have also been raised about the integrity of carbon credits themselves. Environmental experts warn that some projects risk overstating emissions reductions or carbon storage, allowing polluters to continue emitting while offsetting on paper.
Disputes over benefit sharing have further intensified scrutiny. In several project areas, communities say they receive only a small share of revenues, despite their land forming the foundation of carbon schemes.
Awuonda says many of these problems are worsened by weak data systems and imprecise carbon accounting.
“What we have now are generalisations and extrapolations,” he said. “Kenya does not yet have species-specific, tree-level carbon data. Without exact data, we continue underselling our carbon wealth.”
But at the community level, he argues the most immediate problem is understanding.
“Most communities have never even see the agreements,” he said. “They need legal experts to explain the contracts, financial flows, restrictions and consequences before they sign anything.”
Once carbon credits are sold, land use often becomes locked in for decades.
“Once carbon from a forest or conservancy has been sold, that area must remain protected,” Awuonda said. “Communities can no longer use the land the same way they used to.”
For pastoralists, this has translated into grazing restrictions, reduced mobility and limits on cultural practices tied to land. In some areas, misinformation has compounded the problem, with communities saying they were asked to “sell air” due to lack of proper civic education.
In response to rising scrutiny, the government launched the Kenya National Carbon Registry to centralise and digitise carbon project approvals.
“For years, innovation thrived, but we lacked a single, trusted national ledger,” she said. “Today, that changes. The National Carbon Registry is the title deed of Kenya’s emissions reductions.”
Principal Secretary for Environment and Climate Change Dr Festus Ng’eno said carbon credits are being treated as sovereign national assets and described the registry as central to building an export-oriented carbon industry.
According to the government, the registry will improve transparency, prevent double counting and align Kenya’s carbon market with international standards, with projects required to pass environmental assessments, validation by auditors and national authorisation.
“It doesn’t change the fact that we still lack strong laws protecting carbon pricing, valuation and community rights,” he said. “We still have gaps in enforcement.”
Kenya’s carbon industry now stands at a crossroads. On one side lie promises of climate finance, conservation funding and global investment. On the other are communities raising concerns over land access, cultural disruption and unequal benefit sharing.
“Carbon credits are legitimate,” Awuonda said. “But communities must understand the contracts, the benefits, the restrictions and the long-term impact before surrendering land.”
As Kenya deepens its role in global carbon markets under the Paris Agreement, the central question remains whether carbon trading will deliver inclusive climate solutions or reproduce old inequalities under a new climate label.
