Africa Climate Summit: Time for Tangible, Impactful, & Accountable Climate Action

ARJUN AMIN

African leaders, public officials, and private-sector executives will converge in Nairobi, September 4-6, at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) – coinciding with the UN Africa Climate Week (ACW). In recent years, Africa has been the poster child for climate solutions, with carbon credit and offset projects gaining popularity among the public and private sectors alike.

These schemes allow companies, primarily from the Global North, to “offset” their carbon emissions by funding forestry and land management efforts across Africa. Despite the hype around these solutions to climate crisis, serious concerns remain about their efficacy and negative consequences.

And yet, carbon credit and offset schemes will be at the center stage of the Summit, pedaling false climate solutions. With a lot on the line in the coming week, it is imperative to examine closely what some of these carbon credit and offset “solutions” entail – both for the consumers and the communities involved.

For several years, the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a wildlife conservation NGO, has managed a multitude of “community” conservancies in Kenya and operated the Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project (NKGCP), which they describe as “the world’s largest soil carbon removal project.”