Photo: Tom Latoro herds his goats at Leparua conservancy in Kenya’s Laikipia county. Credit: Dominic Kirui

Billed as the world’s largest soil-carbon project, the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project has sold millions of dollars in carbon credits to some of the world’s biggest companies, including Meta and Netflix.

The project was ostensibly designed to preserve around 4.7 million acres of grasslands to lock in planet heating CO2 on land communally owned by traditional pastoralist communities including the Maasai, Borana and Samburu. The grasslands are part of a network of protected areas hosting endangered species such as cheetahs, black rhinos and Rothschild's giraffes, and home to an estimated 460,000 pastoralists and their animals.

Designed by the American soil scientist Mark Ritchie, the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon project requires herders to rotate sheep, goats and cattle grazing so grass can recover and, it’s claimed, lock more carbon into the soil, replacing what the developers call traditional ‘unplanned’ grazing. Changing grazing practices could, the project backers have claimed, lock in around 50 million tons of carbon over the next 30 years, enough to compensate for annual emissions from more than ten million cars.

But Indigenous pastoralist communities have long argued that the carbon credit project, launched in 2012 by Northern Rangelands Trust, has disrupted traditional grazing systems, weakened land rights, and moved forward without their free, prior, and informed consent.

Tom Latoro, a 27-year-old Samburu herder, told Drilled that the grazing restrictions imposed–supposedly to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by faraway polluting corporations–have upended their traditional way of life.

Historically the Samburu, a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic pastoralists in north-central Kenya that share a culture and language with the Maasai people, would move together as entire families as seasons changed, following their cattle and settling wherever they found water and pasture. Now, Latoro’s cattle have moved far toward the highlands of Meru County, where there is plenty of grass. But the family can’t follow them because of the grazing restrictions imposed by the carbon credit project.

“These days, we don’t move as much because of the restrictions. We don’t want to expose our women and children to possible run-ins with conservationists,” said Latoro. “This is not different from total displacement.

Survival International, the UK-based Indigenous rights organization which has investigated the Kenya project, said the grazing restrictions have disrupted traditional migration patterns that pastoralists have relied on for centuries. Last year, a Kenyan court ruled in the herders’ favour, saying the project backers failed to properly obtain local consent.

The ruling also forced Verra—an international nonprofit that runs the world’s largest carbon credit registry and certifies projects including Rangeland—to launch a review of the project and the carbon credits associated with it.

The Northern Rangelands Trust, which did not respond to Drilled’s request for comment, has previously defended the project, claiming community leaders enforce grazing plans and that participation is voluntary.

Meanwhile, some scientists question the project’s carbon sequestration claims—which assume traditional grazing practices degrade soils despite a lack of empirical evidence—entirely.

Jason Sircely, an ecologist and conservation biologist at the International Livestock Research Institute who reviewed the project’s methodology, told Drilled that the scientific evidence on good grazing management remains limited. “There is still little empirical evidence showing that intensive rotational grazing systems are required to provide carbon removals, while fairly minor changes to local and traditional grazing patterns to increase resting can store enough carbon to run carbon projects in rangelands of 200,000 hectares or more,” Sircely said.

In dryland ecosystems such as northern Kenya, rainfall variability makes it difficult to plan and adhere to sophisticated rotational grazing plans, which have higher costs to pastoralist communities than simpler plans compatible with local and traditional knowledge, Sircely added.

Photo: Tom Latoro looking after at his goats in Kenya’s Laikipia county. Credit: Dominic Kirui

However, according to soil scientist Ritchie, satellite data shows that rangeland conditions improved dramatically after implementation of  rotational grazing in 2014, and defended the project’s grazing plans. “The grazing plans used by communities are designed by the communities themselves not by project proponents. Thus such decisions incorporate communities' awareness of increased costs of implementation.”

“Monitoring costs are largely borne by project proponents. A focus on costs ignores the fact that improved grazing practices increase the productivity of grazing lands, livestock densities and overall profitability,” Ritchie added.

Pastoralists Go to Court

Rangelands, which include uncultivated grassland, shrublands, woodlands and deserts, cover roughly half of the world’s land area. These unique, biodiversity-rich ecosystems support the livelihoods of millions of pastoralist peoples worldwide–and have attracted the attention of carbon credit developers.

Pastoral communities in northern Kenya, whose way of life is bound up with their livestock, rely heavily on the health of these grazing lands, which sustain livestock production. Grazing typically follows local and regional rainfall patterns and migration routes. Elders traditionally dictate grazing patterns according to long-standing cultural rules, which proponents argue have sustained pastoralism and land use within broadly sustainable limits for generations.

According to the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project website, rotational grazing has improved pasture and livestock productivity, helping animals produce more milk and meat and fetch better market prices. In addition to generating income off the sale of carbon credits, the project claims to have improved livelihoods for more than 200,000 people in the community.

 

Some herding communities do support the project, citing improved pasture quality and community initiatives such as schools. But others have mounted fierce opposition, arguing that the project model is culturally destructive and endangers their traditional livelihoods and food security by requiring livestock to remain within the project area. This can disrupt or prevent migration following rains or during seasonal droughts.

In 2021, dozens of pastoralists sued the Trust in a Kenyan court for allegedly using their land without consent. The plaintiffs accused the trust of creating conservancies, which later acted as the herders’ representatives in the carbon deal through pressure and intimidation rather than informed consent.

A conservancy is a community managed area of land set aside for wildlife conservation and sustainable land use, usually established through an agreement between local communities and conservation organizations. In this model, communities allow their land to be managed for conservation purposes while retaining ownership and in return receive support such as funding for local development projects like schools and water boreholes.

Under the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project arrangement, conservancies are typically run by locally elected leadership boards and are often registered as community-based organisations. They coordinate pastoral communities' activities such as grazing management, setting aside land for ecological recovery, and managing livestock movement across the shared landscapes. So far, 14 community conservancies are involved in the carbon project.

But according to the Samburu herder Latoro, the permitted grazing areas were gazetted without their participation. “When there is plenty of grass these days, the conservancy leaders don’t allow us to take our animals far. They are paid to do so because I was told they sell the air the grass breathes to people abroad. I don’t understand how it works,” Latoro said.

In January 2025, the court found in the pastoralists favor. According to the court ruling, penalties for herders venturing beyond the restricted zones, which included fines and confiscation of livestock, were voided. NRT disputed the ruling and has since appealed in a higher court.

“There was no proper consultation. We found a lack of transparency; communities didn’t have access to contracts, and some people were bribed or intimidated into signing without the broader community’s knowledge,” said Paul Reno, a Survival International campaigner. “Most shocking was the lack of free, prior and informed consent.”

Lawyers and rights groups representing the pastoralists say the court ruling could invalidate roughly 20% of the Northern Rangeland project’s carbon credits. They warn that credits linked to about half of the project’s other wildlife conservancies may face similar legal challenges.

“This project is just another example of a mechanism that has failed frontline communities and global climate objectives repeatedly,” said Adrien Tofighi-Niaki, a researcher in climate justice and carbon markets. “The fact that warnings were raised and concerns ignored suggests that accountability plays little more than a nominal role in the voluntary carbon markets and is, for the most part, a performative feature. The entire voluntary carbon market system can incentivize land control or conservation models that exclude Indigenous pastoralist governance systems as well as aggravate their struggle against climate change.”

The Kenya dispute comes at a time when global carbon markets are under increasing scrutiny over allegations of inflated claims and environmental and community harms. A growing body of research and investigations has found that many offset projects overstate their climate benefits or fail to reduce emissions at all. This is the latest in a long line of legal setbacks for the carbon markets industry which has left major corporations holding questionable CO2 offsets and facing accusations that they have overstated their climate commitments.

The ruling may also have a bearing on the legality of around four of the conservation groups involved in carbon projects in Kenya, even though they were not part of the lawsuit, according to legal experts consulted by Drilled.

The Kenyan court also found that the heavily armed rangers working for the Northern Rangelands Trust, who often clashed with herders and other Indigenous groups, were violating human rights and must leave the conservancies.

Lemeres Ntirori, a 41-year-old Masai herder, said rangers roughed him up in his village of Itinga in 2023  after accusing him of grazing cattle in a restricted area.

“We never had these kinds of land disputes in the past. In my entire life, I don’t remember living with this kind of disturbance. This project is trying to wipe out our traditional way of life and we shall not accept that,” Ntirori told Drilled.

Since then, Ntirori has been grazing his cattle in the outskirts of the village, wary of any confrontation with rangers. Last year, some of Ntirori’s cattle died during a historic drought in Kenya as he could not move them out of the designated area to find water and grass.

The herder hopes that the 2025 court ruling will give communities a chance to reclaim what they feel has been lost since carbon credit schemes began reshaping daily life on their ancestral lands.

Verra says it is reviewing the project and until this review is completed, the Northern Rangelands project will not be permitted to sell any credits generated through the managed grazing routes program. However, companies can still rely on previously purchased credits from the project, effectively allowing business as usual despite the legal victory for pastoralists and even as serious questions remain unresolved. Verra did not respond to Drilled’s request for comment.

Until the court ruling, the Northern Rangeland project had sold more than six million carbon credits, worth as much as $90 million, to buyers including Netflix and Meta, which owns the WhatsApp messaging app and social media networks Instagram and Facebook. Neither Netflix nor Meta responded to Drilled.

In Africa, where governments and investors are rapidly expanding carbon markets as a climate finance solution, experts warn that weak regulation and unequal power dynamics have turned carbon trading into a new form of green colonialism where indigenous communities are uprooted from their lands , dispossessed to fulfil global climate goals. They argue that Africa has become a testing ground for false carbon offset schemes that allow polluters in the Global North to delay real emissions cuts.

“The Northern Kenya carbon project case illustrates a big problem at the heart of carbon markets: while companies present offsets as a climate solution, they often shift the burden of climate action onto vulnerable communities which allows major emitters to continue business as usual. The question is no longer just whether these projects store carbon but at what social cost, and for whose benefit,” said Joab Okanda, a climate ,energy and development expert based in Nairobi ,Kenya.

There are over 2,500 carbon credit projects registered in Africa, and over 600 of them are registered with Verra.

And despite serious questions about the legitimacy of carbon markets, demand for carbon credits in Africa and other developing regions is rising sharply from technology companies seeking to offset emissions generated by data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure which are expected to cause a surge in  global energy consumption over the coming decade.

According to Reno from Survival International, corporations continue to use dubious and sometimes harmful carbon credit projects to “greenwash their image” rather than actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  “They offset through dubious projects, slowing down the fight against climate change. Indigenous peoples pay the price.”