Africa’s Carbon Market Dilemma
Carbon offset projects in regions characterised by weak land tenure and rule of law can fuel land grabs, environmental damage and community displacement.
Africa’s natural landscapes have huge potential for climate change mitigation. As a result, the continent has attracted intense interest from carbon markets. However, this often occurs at the expense of local communities. Legitimate land rights must be protected to ensure that climate action in Africa is both effective and equitable.
Africa is home to some of the world’s largest natural carbon sinks. Through its forests, grasslands and diverse wetland ecosystems, the continent plays a key role in global efforts to mitigate climate change. Africa’s forests alone are estimated to remove about 1.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, equal to 20 percent of Europe’s yearly emissions. Consequently, the continent has increasingly become the he focus of land-based measures to mitigate climate change.
Carbon markets, particularly voluntary carbon markets, have become a prominent mechanism for financing climate mitigation measures, with recent developments at the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) underlining their growing influence. The carbon credits market is projected to increase to 50 billion US dollars by 2030. This form of trade is based on projects that either reduce, remove or offset greenhouse gas emissions, typically through reforestation, afforestation, improved forest management or forest conservation. Yet these interventions often come at a significant cost for local communities.
Carbon credits–carbon offset credits in particular– have been criticised as ineffective in reducing emissions, as many land-based projects fail to deliver the promised environmental and social benefits. Additionally, these initiatives often depend on access to large tracts of land, intensifying demand and causing conflicts with existing communities.
Figure 1
Communities losing ground
Between 2015 and 2020, the share of total communal land shrank by 2.4 million ha, with losses outpacing gains.
Such conflicts are particularly concerning in Africa, where land ownership is frequently characterised by a complex blend of formal and informal land tenure systems. In many parts of the continent, land rights are based on custom rather than law, and land is often held communally. Customary systems often lack formal legal recognition and protection, leaving local communities vulnerable to external pressures and land acquisition. For example, in Niger, only 4.5 percent of the adult population has documents verifying land ownership, titles and use. Rates of tenure security are higher elsewhere in Africa, such as in Benin and Uganda, where the figures stand at 36 and 43 percent respectively. However, substantial portions of the population, including both farmers and pastoralists, still lack the legal title to their land.
The implementation of carbon offsetting projects in Africa and the associated growth in demand for land have had significant impacts on the land rights and land tenure security of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. For instance, along-term carbon offset project in northern Kenya restricted the traditional pastoral practices of the Borana and Samburu people by reforesting land traditionally used as grazing pasture. It also disrupted and prevented migrations that typically follow rainfall during increasingly severe seasonal droughts. In another case, in Uganda, Norwegianowned company Green Sources acquired rights to implement plantation forestry with carbon offsetting measures on almost 12,000 hectares of the Central Forest Reserve, a traditional site for pastoral, agricultural and cultural practices of local communities. Since the acquisition, reports have surfaced from these communities of forced evictions, access denial, impacts to their livelihoods and even physical violence.
These developments reveal a common pattern: carbon offsetting projects often prioritise financial gain over the socioeconomic needs of people. Those who hail carbon markets as the solution to Africa’s climate finance gap, valued at 200 to 400 billion US dollars annually, tend to overlook the markets’ failures in delivering real benefits to local populations. For climate mitigation efforts in Africa to be genuinely sustainable, all actors must work to protect existing land rights, ensure mutual benefit and safeguard against predatory practices.
Figure 2
An opaque global marketplace
Indigenous Peoples and local communities often only receive a fraction of profits from carbon credits trading.
Some climate mitigation projects are already working towards these goals. In Tanzania’s Yaeda Valley, the land rights NGO, the Ujamaa Community Resource Team, teamed up with representatives of the Hadza people–historical inhabitants of the land –and two British volunteers. Together, they created Carbon Tanzania. This carbon offset project sells credits for forest conservation carried out in part by the Hadza who both retain their traditional custodial rights and, alongside other local communities, receive 60 percent of project revenue. A portion of this income has already been planned for further conservation training and development within the Hadza community.
Projects like these demonstrate that climate mitigation efforts designed and implemented with active community engagement have the potential to not only secure land rights and provide benefit sharing and safety for local populations, but also expand the possibilities of conservation efforts. In order to create holistic and responsible land-based measures to mitigate climate change in Africa, the importance of land rights must be foregrounded.
