CO2 trading at the expense of Africans

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, Africans are trying to find a common position. Many of them see international CO2 trading as a pure rip-off by the West.

Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan expressed what is on the minds of many African climate activists and environmentalists. The ideas currently being discussed on how to get climate change under control are "detrimental to Africa", she emphasized in the week before the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai. In particular, she mentioned the internationally hotly debated CO2 trading programs: "Foreign companies are reaping more than we are."

She encouraged her counterparts from neighboring countries to take a common position against this at the climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, "so that we can find a common way to protect our environment". Not for the benefit of large international corporations, however, but for the Africans themselves.

CO2 trading - this is the big solution being debated at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai these days. The oil-producing countries and large private corporations in particular are advocates if they want to fulfill their voluntary commitment to emit no more CO2 by 2050. This enables them, if they do not reduce emissions themselves, to support projects elsewhere in the world that avoid or reduce CO2. This allows them to virtually offset their own emissions.

A market worth billions

Recently, this trade has been booming and the focus is on Africa. The reason: Africa produces only 11 percent of global CO2 emissions, but has the second largest rainforest on earth and carbon-absorbing ecosystems such as mangrove forests and swamps, so-called carbon sinks, which absorb huge amounts of carbon. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, the annual global market for voluntary CO2 certificates will be worth over 50 billion US dollars by 2030.

One example: In June this year, a Saudi Arabian company held the world's largest auction of CO2 certificates, in Kenya. The Saudi company Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (RVCMC) was founded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund PIF with the purpose of purchasing CO2 certificates worldwide. It chose Kenya as an investment location because the country produces far less than one percent of global greenhouse gases and offers CO2 certificates worldwide. Kenya is the African leader in the sector. Sixteen Saudi companies, including the state-owned oil giant Aramco, currently the second largest company in the world and therefore responsible for enormous quantities of greenhouse gases, purchased over two million tons of carbon credits in Kenya's capital Nairobi at a unit price of 6.2 dollars per ton.

African governments like the one in Kenya see this as a strategy to make money. Tech giants such as Meta, which includes Whatsapp and Facebook, and Netflix have recently acquired concessions for carbon credits in northern Kenya. Kenya's President William Ruto, who hosted the African Climate Summit in Nairobi in September, described Africa's carbon sinks as an "unprecedented economic gold mine". They have the potential to absorb millions of tons of CO2 every year, which, according to Ruto, should translate into "billions of dollars".

Indigenous people become "invaders"

In order to be able to collect this money, Africa's governments are pursuing a strategy of designating more and more large areas of land and forest as protected areas in order to establish even more CO2 sinks. This means that these areas are subject to the respective environmental protection laws, according to which no building or living is allowed there, i.e. they should remain untouched. Every tree, every square meter of mangrove forest thus becomes a potential investment portfolio for foreign corporations. There is an increasing tendency to fence off large areas of these important CO2-absorbing areas and to keep people out, even by force of arms. "Those who control Africa's forests can make a lot of money," explains Justin Kenrick from the NGO Forest People's Program, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous forest peoples.

The Kenyan government's CO2 trading strategy is currently focusing on the Mau forest in the west of the country, the largest forest area in Kenya. But it is home to the indigenous Ogiek people, hunters and gatherers who also keep cattle. The forest has been their traditional habitat for thousands of years, and hunting - forbidden since colonial times - was once part of their lifestyle.

Now Kenya's government is claiming the forest as a protected area. According to the law, no humans are allowed to live in it. It was only in October that President Ruto once again promised Kenya's Environmental Protection Agency that the already militarily trained and armed game rangers would receive even more equipment and training to protect the forests and nature "from intruders". He launched a reforestation program to expand the protected areas.

The Ogiek don't know where to go

Shortly thereafter, hundreds of heavily armed rangers entered the Mau forest and burned down the Ogiek's huts, Ogiek leader Daniel Kobei told local media. The rangers ordered the more than 700 forest dwellers to move elsewhere. However, they do not know where to go.

In a joint statement, international human rights organizations that campaign for the rights of indigenous peoples accuse Kenya's government of selling off the Mau forest as part of the CO2 trade. The Ogiek took Kenya's government to the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. As in numerous similar cases brought by indigenous peoples from Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Court emphasized that the government may not forcibly evict people from their land without their prior, voluntary consent.

Lucy Claridge, director of the International Lawyers Project, explains: "We strongly suspect that this is linked to carbon credits." Claridge, who has been providing legal advice to the Ogiek since 2010, referred to the recent negotiations between the Kenyan government and a young Dubai-based carbon offset company, Blue Carbon, which is interested in the Mau forest as a carbon sink, as well as the government's announcement to increase funding for forest conservation. Blue Carbon, however, denies this.

In a statement, the Kenyan Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry said it was "fully aware" of the action to reclaim parts of the Mau Forest against "encroachment and illegal logging activities". It called on the "inter-agency security teams" to "conduct the operation humanely".

For Africa's climate activists and environmentalists, however, this is the wrong way to save the planet. On the one hand, this means that large greenhouse gas producers can continue as before if they only buy enough CO2 certificates in Africa. On the other hand, Africans, who are facing huge population growth - and the increasingly endangered indigenous peoples have less and less land at their disposal because a large part of their forests and nature are fenced off and defended by force of arms - in order to make money elsewhere.