Carbon markets have become one of the most fashionable answers to the climate crisis. Money is flowing into forests, farms, grasslands, and restoration projects as companies seek credits to compensate for their emissions. The promise is attractive: protect nature, earn carbon revenue and improve the lives of communities living on the land.
However, the reality has been more complicated. Across Africa, carbon projects have attracted growing scrutiny and a steady stream of stories about communities receiving little value, farmers signing contracts they barely understand, and developers capturing a disproportionate share of the proceeds.
These stories risk undermining an idea that could otherwise channel significant private capital into conservation and rural economies. Kenya has positioned itself as a regional leader in carbon markets, particularly through forest, rangeland and agricultural projects.
The controversy surrounding some carbon trading projects has demonstrated how quickly questions about community consent, ownership and benefit sharing can overshadow the environmental case for a project.
This is why the future of Africa’s carbon market will depend on a question that is more fundamental than the price of a credit: who actually creates its value?
Recently, at the New York Climate Week, a discussion hosted by the VCM+ Collaborative on building a high-integrity carbon market brought this question into sharp focus. One project noted that it sets a floor of $8 per carbon credit to cover basic field activities, before accounting for co-benefits.
Labour, governance and opportunity costs are often among the first costs squeezed when projects compete on price.
That is a dangerous business model because if the people doing the work are treated as a cost to minimise, the market will struggle to deliver durable environmental outcomes.
Contracts can create similar problems. One farmer described a 40-year carbon agreement in which the developer could exit while the farmer remained liable for the full term, despite the trees having a shorter lifespan. The agreement was eventually revised, but the episode illustrates how unequal bargaining power can be embedded in apparently legitimate contracts.
For Kenya and other African countries, stronger markets will require more than international standards and attractive investment propositions.
Communities need understandable contracts, fair exit rights, technical assistance, upfront financing and meaningful influence over decisions.
Projects built around local ownership are more likely to retain trust, survive political and economic changes and protect the environmental assets on which credits depend. Carbon revenue can finance stewardship jobs, diversify rural livelihoods and create enterprises that continue after carbon payments end.
Africa should therefore not reject carbon markets because some projects have gone wrong, but it should demand better markets.
A carbon credit represents more than a tonne of carbon.
Behind it are farmers, pastoralists, forests, land and years of stewardship. If carbon markets are to become a serious source of climate finance for Africa, the people creating that value cannot remain the weakest link in the value chain.