The most significant flaws in a carbon credit scheme Survival International has observed among its clients Netflix and Meta are revealed in a recent study that was just issued. Blood Carbon: How a Carbon Offset Scheme Makes Millions from Indigenous Land in Northern Kenya is a report that examines the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project, a project run by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) organization on a region home to over 100,000 indigenous people, including the Samburu, the Borana, and the Rendille.
The project might bring in between $300 and $500 million, and possibly even more. Some of the report's findings are as follows:
The initiative is centered on the replacement of indigenous peoples' traditional grazing practices with a centrally managed one that is more akin to commercial farming.
The initiative would endanger the local pastoral peoples' ability to migrate during droughts by prohibiting such activity.To yet, not even the slightest shred of persuasive proof has been shown to support the NRT's claim that it has sufficiently informed communities about the project or obtained their Prior, Free, and Informed Consent.
Just a very small group of people received knowledge about the initiative, and often only after it had already begun.As a result, few few locals are aware of the program in its entirety.
The project's legal foundation presents some very severe issues and concerns, particularly over the NRT's ability to own and trade carbon from the impacted property.
The initiative fails to offer convincing justifications for its carbon additionality, which is a prerequisite for the creation of carbon credits.
The report serves as the official beginning of Survival International's Bloody Carbon campaign, which raises awareness about the risk that the sale of carbon credits from Protected Areas could significantly increase funding for the mistreatment of tribal peoples while doing nothing to stop the climatic changes.
According to report author and former director of the Rainforest Foundation UK Simon Counsell, NRT's carbon project falls short of some of the key requirements for carbon offset projects, including how to demonstrate clear additionality, have a credible reference scenario, and be able to measure carbon 'loss' in other territories. The systems in place for keeping track of a project's progress and effects are inherently faulty. It is highly improbable that the carbon credits sold by the project actually contribute to more carbon sinks in the local soil.
Fiore Longo, the campaign manager for Survival's Decolonize Conservation initiative, said that after years of human rights abuses done in the name of so-called conservation, Western NGOs are now robbing indigenous people of their land in the name of mitigation of the climate.
The NRT initiative is supported by the same colonial and racial attitude that permeates many significant conservation projects—namely, that indigenous peoples are to blame for the environment's destruction—as this paper amply reveals.
Nonetheless, the research demonstrates that native peoples are the finest environmentalists.
This endeavor is not simply risky greenwashing; it is also blood carbon because NRT is profiting from the destruction of the way of life of those who are least to blame for climate change.