Op-Ed by David James Arach, Senior Program Manager, Land Environment and Climate Program
Nashami (name changed) is an elderly woman and mother of three from Ol Donyiro Community in Isiolo County, Central Kenya. Her community is part of a carbon credit project. She says she heard that their air is being sold abroad for money, which she thinks is why there are rampant droughts and why community members have been getting strange illnesses lately. She is one of the women who routinely conducts rituals to appease the gods for rain in times of prolonged drought.
From 2020 to 2023, communities in East Africa experienced the worst drought since the 1980s. After three years of below-average rainfall, families lost livestock, crops, and livelihoods. Pastoral communities, such as Nashami’s, who make their living from herding livestock, are particularly vulnerable to drought-induced shocks. Climate change manifests as unreliable rainfall patterns and prolonged droughts in Kenya. Carbon credit projects are being implemented to provide alternative income and build communities’ resilience to the shocks caused by climate change.
While Kenya has made commendable strides by enacting laws to provide a framework to address climate change and regulate carbon trading markets and projects, there are still glaring gaps. Many Kenyans, on whose lands carbon credit projects are being implemented, have no idea what carbon credits and trading are. Moreover, the laws lack some key provisions, such as defining carbon rights. Also, adopting the Community Development Agreement, a concept borrowed from the extractives industry, undermines community property rights and autonomy.
Today, about 59 different carbon credit projects are being implemented in Kenya. The largest is the Northern Rangeland Trust’s (NRT) Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project (NKRCP), which started in 2013 and will be implemented for 30 years. In 2020, the project reportedly raised 14.6 million US Dollars through carbon credit sales. The project is regarded as “a darling of carbon market supporters,” winning a series of awards at the 27th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2022, and was hailed as “exemplary” by Kenyan President William Ruto.
This apparent profitability of Kenya’s carbon projects prompted the government to enact the Climate Change Act, Cap 387A, in 2023 and, thereafter, the Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations in 2024. However, both the Act and Regulations were enacted in a matter of weeks with limited public participation. The Government is in the process of drafting two additional Regulations: The Climate Change Carbon Trading-Regulations of 2025 and The Climate Change Non-Market Approaches Regulations of 2025.
Certain provisions of the law, such as clearer revenue sharing modalities; the requirement for free, prior, and informed consent before project approval; and a publicly accessible carbon registry, are quite progressive. However, the law fails to define a fundamental aspect: carbon rights. These are rights over emissions reductions or carbon removals that can be defined as intangible assets created by legislative and contractual arrangements. They define the contractual frameworks that define who has the right to the benefits and responsibilities associated with carbon stocks and the ability to sell or trade carbon credits for emissions reductions. This omission deprives communities of their legal property rights over carbon credits, limiting their ability to trade in the carbon markets.
The law also adopted the concept of Community Development Agreements (CDAs) for projects being implemented on community lands. A CDA is a legally binding contract between a company, often a mining or development company, and a community and is closely supervised by the government. The CDA is borrowed from the extractives industry and is intended for the exploration of resources for public interest. This insinuates that the drafters of the law presumed that carbon credits are public interest and therefore communities can only participate as beneficiaries and not necessarily in the governance of such projects.
The omission of provision on carbon rights and the adoption of CDA creates a conflict with the Constitution and the Community Land Act, which provide that communities have full ownership rights over their lands and the autonomy to contract with outsiders, including investors, on their terms. Furthermore, the establishment of numerous subcommittees heavily constituted by government officials in the CDAs undermines community autonomy and community land governance structures established by the Community Land Act.
Over time, the pastoral communities have developed comprehensive resilience mechanisms, such as mobility and agro-pastoralism, to adapt to climate change and unreliable rainfall patterns. Mobility helps the herders track greener pastures and avoid forage supply scarcity.
While agro-pastoralism helps communities diversify their food sources by mixing grain production with livestock management. Farming is increasingly becoming practiced to make up for lost income from declining herds, but it is not being developed as a substitute for pastoralism.
These indigenous resilience strategies – mobility and agro-pastoralism – are effective but increasingly under strain. Without legal frameworks that support rather than override community autonomy, such time-tested responses to climate stress may collapse.
Many actors are working to support the development of robust laws and policies. For example, the Grassroots Justice Network’s carbon justice campaign has produced 6 key principles for carbon justice. Network members have drafted a new toolkit that details how to influence national policy to reflect community needs. In April 2025, Namati convened a workshop in Kenya, bringing together Network members from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in Africa; India and the Philippines in Asia; and Chile in Latin America, actively influencing national carbon legislation in their respective countries. Grassroots movements are working to ensure carbon laws center justice, not just profits. Kenya’s laws must catch up.
Kenya stands at a crossroads. With carbon markets expanding, the question is not whether to trade carbon – but who gets to decide, how, and who benefits. Without clear carbon rights and meaningful community governance, these laws risk becoming tools of exclusion. The time is now to put communities at the heart of climate justice.