‘Old Ian’s been scratching around in all directions, hasn’t he?’ Pete Morkel laughed when he learned that the Orange River-Karoo Conservation Area (ORKCA) was planning a carbon offset credit scheme. ‘Look, I find this carbon market to be a bit bullshit, but hey, if well-meaning rich people want to give us their money to do conservation in exchange for carbon credits, then why not?’1 Morkel implied that in the early days after Ian Craig had purchased his Namibian farmlands, Craig was under the impression that the team would just find a couple of rich benefactors to fund the entire scheme. The voluntary carbon offset market was possibly a new way to tap into benefactors. Rather than begging for or soliciting donations from English royalty or billionaire philanthropists, ORKCA could offer something to ‘sell’ to business and corporations in the global north looking to ‘green’ their enterprises and offset their carbon emissions.
‘You see, carbon sequestration is not like planting wheat and harvesting it to sell’, said Ian Craig. ‘While it is a sort of conservation dividend, it’s not really about getting a pay-cheque. These carbon credits are an objective measure of land rejuvenation and offsetting of pollution.’2 Craig echoed many established voices within the carbon finance industry. In many ways, carbon finance has fundamentally changed how ‘conservation’ operations work. Even more broadly, it has reshaped the relationship between rural, peripheral areas and the global centres of power. This chapter examines the institutional and scientific background of carbon credits, whether voluntary or governmental, and considers the relationship between emissions producers in the Global North and envisioned ‘carbon sinks’ in the Global South, showing how locales in the Global South continue to be, as some researchers argue, ‘rural feedstock for the industrialised North’.3 However, instead of producing wheat, meat or skins to export to Europe or North America, the ‘dividend’ – as Ian Craig phrased it – is proof that a given quantity of carbon dioxide equivalent has been removed from the atmosphere.
Prosopis glandulosa (honey mesquite) growth on southern Homsrivier Farm, surrounded by sands from the Orange River floods
PHOTO: B.C. MOORE, 2021
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The modern carbon finance market emerged out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sought to use market-based incentives to commit national governments to reduce emissions, on a global stage. So-called Kyoto Units were allocated to each participating nation, granting them the emissions rights at each country’s 1990 levels. These units could be bought and sold among signatory parties via a newly formed emissions trading system, such that if, say, Germany successfully reduced its emissions for a period of time, some of its Kyoto Units could be sold to a country which exceeded its quota.
The Clean Development Mechanism was the most important aspect of the Kyoto Protocol’s great compromise, which would taint emissions-reduction schemes in the years to come. Ultimately, the most polluting states in the Global North did not really want to stop polluting. Nevertheless, it was believed that emissions could be reduced on a global scale if the Global South got involved through the sale of carbon offset credits, which represented the certified removal or avoidance of one tonne of CO2 equivalent (hereafter, tCO2-e) from the atmosphere. As is the case today, if they were to receive Kyoto funds, approved offset projects needed to prove additionality, and anticipate and avoid leakage. All carbon offset or sequestration projects revolve around these elusively simple terms. First, it must be shown that whatever intervention is being made will reduce carbon emissions to below what would ordinarily be the case if no project were supported.5 Second, it must be shown that the emissions that are being locally expunged or reduced are not simply being moved elsewhere. If a coal furnace in one place is replaced with a solar plant, and the coal furnace is merely reconstructed elsewhere for the same purpose, this would be an example of leakage.
Carbon markets depend on complicated calculations of greenhouse gas equivalence. Even though there are scores of gases emitted into the atmosphere, aggregate emissions and removals are to be expressed only in tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2-e), calculated based on ‘global warming potential values’ specific to each greenhouse gas.6 These calculations have been challenged and revised on a number of occasions, and this was only part of the reason for the volatility of the emissions trading system in its early years.7 On a
By the turn of the twenty-first century, there was increased mobilisation for a voluntary carbon market that would be at least partly disconnected from the Kyoto model. Whereas the United Nations system was primarily targeted at governments, a voluntary system would reflect private efforts of companies themselves to ‘green’ their operations in response to consumer and civil society pressures. Companies understood that consumers and investors increasingly wanted their dollars not to be spent on operations that contributed towards global warming and climate change. Like the great Kyoto compromise described above, the voluntary carbon offset market was ultimately a means for corporations to claim that they were quickly cleaning up their act while not necessarily taking swift action to reduce emissions. Where true emissions reductions require changing technologies, changing lifestyles and changing priorities, reducing both production and profits, carbon offset schemes allow for companies to potentially ‘reduce’ emissions by 100 per cent in a fairly short period of time.10 ‘Net Zero’ or ‘Carbon Neutral’ companies may not need to drastically reduce their emissions at all, as long as they buy sufficient credits.
In order for companies to purchase carbon offset credits on a voluntary basis, a parallel system needed to be put in place whereby conservation organisations and companies building projects to sequester or offset carbon could have their operations independently verified as scientifically grounded. Carbon finance itself necessitates a global equivalence of carbon offset programmes, such that one tCO2-e sequestered or offset in one country can be verified as true and equivalent to projects in other countries. The largest player in the certification
Fifteen years later, Verra was certifying and overseeing more than two thousand carbon offset projects, facilitating the sale of verified credits on the international market for over seventy five per cent of all carbon offset credits globally.12 Despite being a not-for-profit NGO, Verra has become a massive organisation on which the entire carbon finance market depends. After all, without verification that additionality is present, that leakage has been avoided and permanence has been maintained, the entire system of trust that specific quantities of tCO2-e indeed have been offset collapses. Verra has situated itself as an impartial broker mediating the exchanges between the company seeking to ‘green’ its operations, the international project looking to sequester carbon, and the scientists and inspection agencies who write the methodologies and monitor carbon capture.13
Although the vast majority of global emissions originate from developed economies in Europe and North America, as well as industrialised East Asia, the vast majority of Verra’s carbon offset and sequestration projects are situated in the Global South. It has certified more projects in Africa than Europe and North America combined. This may not necessarily matter as it relates to atmospheric CO2, but it does matter as it relates to strategies for development and where a national economy or national environment fits into the global economy. Even before carbon offset credits were sold by projects in the developing world, many scholars understood that the Global South was the source of ‘ghost acres’, lands coerced to support the expanding diets and expanding
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In the first five years of the voluntary carbon market, there was an explosion in private donations and investment into carbon sequestration and offset schemes across the globe. It followed, then, that conservation projects increasingly targeted carbon finance as a means to support their initiatives. This was ultimately part of a broader shift whereby conservation initiatives structured their operations and foci to meet the investment and social corporate responsibility goals of for-profit firms. The massive organisation, The Nature Conservancy, particularly its in-house investment wing, NatureVest, was at the forefront of this transformation.16
As early as 2009, The Nature Conservancy entered into discussions with Ian Craig at Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy to explore the possibilities of building a carbon project within the (then recently formed) Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT).17 Lewa and the NRT were in many ways the poster children of the possibility to wed private and community nature conservation operations. Both the Kenyan parties and the international agencies viewed carbon as a possible way to further fund these initiatives. However, Ian Craig and the NRT did not really have forests to conserve – they had only grass and soil. If they were to sell carbon offset credits, they would need to reconceptualise and establish new ways of measuring carbon stocks and carbon sequestration.
They called Mark E. Ritchie, Professor at Syracuse University in the United States. After receiving his PhD in Environmental Science from the University of
‘I first grew seriously interested in soil carbon when I was working on a regenerative grazing project near the site of an old, abandoned gold mine in Nevada’, Ritchie said. ‘My colleague asked me if there was concrete data on the relationship between changing grazing patterns and SOC capture rates. After digging in my computer a little bit, I saw that there definitely was’.19 In April 2010, Ritchie founded a Delaware-domiciled limited liability company, Soils for the Future, which provides technical services and project management to companies, landowners and other entities seeking to improve their soil. Most of their operations are concerned with measurement of SOC stocks, as well as supporting carbon offset credit programmes which deal with soil.20
At this stage, there was no accepted methodology for assessing and verifying SOC storage projects for the production of carbon offset credits, and Mark Ritchie was working on building one. The Nature Conservancy and Fauna and Flora International – Lewa and the NRT’s largest supporters – hired Ritchie to design what eventually became known as the VM0032 methodology, which was submitted to Verra in late 2010 and was eventually fully approved after modifications in 2015.21 Ritchie’s methodology would be one of the first to provide for large-scale soil organic carbon capture projects, and most future SOC schemes, including NRT’s, would be based on it.
It is worthwhile to delve briefly into the methodology required to ascertain SOC storage in grasslands, because this will enable us to contextualise the socioeconomic foundations of soil carbon capture for conservation projects in semi-arid and arid areas, like Kenya and Namibia. VM0032 projects are intended to be those that manipulate grazing strategies, timing and grouping of domesticated livestock ‘in ways that sequester soil carbon and/or reduce
‘You could theoretically take soil sample cores from maybe 200–500 points along the project site, and then come back after a sufficient period of time to take new measurements from the same locations to measure the growth’, Ritchie explained.
The problem with the measured strategy is that while SOC capture still occurs in more arid areas, the rate of change is so slow that one would have to return after ten years or so to get statistically sufficient measurements. For landowners or companies sponsoring these projects, this just isn’t cost-effective.23
Ritchie’s methodology instead relied on a mathematical modelling approach, which would model and simulate the initial soil core samples based on a comparable case study.24 In short, if a comparable published data set existed that claimed an average carbon sequestration per hectare, then future SOC projects that controlled land use in similar ways could simply measure the baseline using soil core samples and then extrapolate the gains from the model. One still needs to take core samples occasionally to continue to show that the project adheres to the other published study, but the advantage of the modelled approach is that one does not need to constantly measure samples in a laboratory to claim the sale of carbon offset credits.25 Finally, the methodology required monitoring and recording leakage, such that if livestock were moved out of the target area, this would be reflected in the model.
With the methodology submitted for review in 2010 – and expected to pass with some small modifications – the Northern Rangelands Trust officially launched what would become known as the Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project (NKGCP), in coordination with its main funding bodies, The Nature
The NKGCP spanned a territory of more than 2 million hectares, and it was home to more than 112,000 primarily Samburu and Maasai residents. It applied for Verra certification in 2015 with the goal of rehabilitating rangeland and sequestering SOC through shifting pastoralist herding strategies from ‘continuous, unplanned grazing’ to ‘planned rotational grazing’ across the project area.28 The project would prove additionality based on the old-fashioned ‘tragedy of the commons’ view of communal grazing as inherently destructive, ‘depleting soils of organic matter’.29 In many ways, SOC projects in the Global South are indirectly pressured to condemn traditional grazing systems in order to conform to modernist development logic: a logic which works in favour of carbon projects seeking such additionality. Justifying additionality can therefore go hand-in-hand with resistance by local pastoralists to such a scheme, as the latter’s hesitancy to change their grazing strategies can in turn be reported back to funding bodies as evidence of antiquated traditional worldviews in need of intervention. The NKGCP promoters planned to use funds from credit sales to institute a rotational grazing system whereby livestock would be constantly herded, never grazing on one particular pasture more than once per wet and dry season, increasing annual SOC sequestration by approximately 1.85 million tCO2-e across the constituencies.30 On its final approval in 2020, the NKGCP became the largest soil organic carbon scheme in the Global South.31
(1) Rapidly build grass banks that can be used as forage during droughts. (2) The accumulation of soil carbon will lead to greater infiltration of rainfall, which will make communities progressively less vulnerable to climate variability and drought as the project proceeds. (3) Further build the livestock-to-market program instituted by NRT to provide cash compensation for de-stocking in advance of intense droughts. (4) Through education associated with monitoring social benefits of the project, continue to convey the community and personal revenue advantages linked to project success (and thus participation). (5) The project will progressively entrain sustainable livestock management processes as a new “tradition” of planned rotational grazing.32
Mark Ritchie framed their strategies as maintaining livestock numbers and grazing pressures steady across the whole project area but increasing movement from area to area.33 Of course, the fundamental ecological and ethical problem of the NKGCP is that if livestock numbers must be maintained steady across the project area for a given period of time – necessary to prove both additionality and avoidance of leakage – then African pastoralists whose communal conservancies signed on to the programme are effectively banned from increasing their wealth in livestock.
This is where the GrazingWORKS livestock-to-market programme became so crucial: it needed a means to de-stock the conservancies if carbon credits were to be certified and sold. Additional livestock would violate the terms of the methodology and reduce the SOC sequestration rate, yet at the same time, community buy-in would be lost if all accumulation of wealth in cattle were banned. GrazingWORKS had been founded with broader conservation goals regarding community buy-in – that is, permission to sell cattle within
During the earlier years of USAID and Danida grant funding alone, GrazingWORKS was purchasing only about 1,000 cattle per year from NRT conservancies to fatten on Ol Pejeta, Borana and other conservancies. After the NatureVest funding came in, the programme immediately ramped up production to purchase up to 10,000 cattle per year.34 Some critics of GrazingWORKS have argued that the programme was intended to de-stock communities to make way for wildlife,35 but it is more likely that GrazingWORKS provided the infrastructure to avoid leakage within an intended SOC sequestration project. By constantly buying increasing numbers of young cattle from African pastoralists, livestock numbers could remain fairly stable, and the average age and weight of animals on the communal areas – where SOC was being sequestered – would likely decrease, potentially reducing grazing burdens and increasing SOC. However, larger and larger quantities of heavier cattle were now grazing outside the project area, on the private commercial conservancies, likely negating some of the benefits of whatever sequestration would occur on the NKGCP lands.
The GrazingWORKS system also set in place the disciplinary mechanisms by which African pastoralist grazing behaviour could be monitored and controlled by conservationists like the NRT, Lewa, Soils for the Future and others. Not only would both GrazingWORKS and the NKGCP use investor funds to hire separate cattle herds, livestock wardens and game rangers – individuals whose livelihoods depended upon adherence to these new models of grazing behaviour – the programmes instituted new technological shifts in surveillance. Mark Ritchie remarked that his team used satellite imagery to monitor long-term vegetation changes and short-term grazing patterns. They could track pastures that had already been grazed, direct livestock herders employed by the programme and police those grazing the same sections twice.36
Kenyan law grants conservancies ownership over carbon rights, so it was necessary for the NRT to obtain signed ‘Carbon Consent Declarations’ from
By the middle of 2022, according to Ian Craig, all 3.2 million SOC offset credits were sold for USD 12 per credit, bringing in a gross revenue of USD 38.4 million.39 The purchasers of the NKGCP credits are well-known international technology, travel and banking companies.40 In February 2022, the first payments to NKGCP conservancies were made, with each conservancy receiving KES 38,880,000 (approximately USD 324,000 at the time), and it was expected that they would receive the same payment in 2023, bringing the total amount disbursed from the 2013–2016 monitoring period to about USD 9 million.41 While this is not an insignificant amount of money, when spread out across the population of the conservancies – 112,000 people and assuming an average family size of seven – it is only about USD 112 per family per year for all the work, personal sacrifice and surveillance to sequester carbon. This is certainly less impressive than framing the NKGCP revenues in aggregate. Furthermore, if the NRT’s numbers are reliable, more than seventy five per cent of the revenue from the sales of carbon credits was lost to middle-men, scientists and agents, including Verra, NativeEnergy and Syracuse University. One may reasonably wonder if this is an acceptable overhead for a charitable project that has won international awards.42
These funds are significant, and they were meaningful enough that the GrazingWORKS livestock-to-market programme was in the process of being phased out.46 By 2021, GrazingWORKS had been scaled back to nearly fifteen per cent of its height in 2015–2018.47 Ian Craig stated that, in the future, the NRT and other conservation operations would focus more heavily on the duo of tourism and carbon as a means to finance their operations. Carbon was the new cash cow, and they were ready and willing to double down on their efforts to sequester carbon. After all, the NRT estimated that the Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project would be able to offset more than fifty million tCO2-e over the thirty-year lifespan of the project.48 Many, including Ian Craig, viewed carbon offset credits as the future of conservation finance, and Craig intended to bring this approach with him to his new operations in Namibia.
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As Oana gradually morphed into Orange River-Karoo Conservation Area (ORKCA) in 2021, its funding strategy shifted from gap-year environmental education and ‘adventure tourism’ programmes to one much more intertwined with the financial connections of conservation operations like Lewa, the NRT and The Nature Conservancy. Andreia Pawel noted that by 2022 KumKum Adventure Tourism (Pty) Ltd – the business-side of Oana – was effectively
Aerial view of the steep and mountainous Pelladrift Farm, within ORKCA’s conservation zone, 2023
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROSITA SMEENK AND MAURITS MATERS, USED WITH PERMISSION
Born in Montreal in 1970, Jonathan Baillie earned degrees in Canada, the USA and a PhD in biology from Imperial College London, after which he worked for the National Geographic Society and the Zoological Society of London.50 In 2016, Baillie married Ian Craig’s daughter, Jecca, in a ceremony on Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, attended by more than three hundred people, including Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.51 Probably through his close
Since April 2020, Baillie has been President of a Washington-based charitable company called Natural State. Perhaps echoing the call from billionaire industrialist/philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, who called for preservation of at least thirty per cent of the earth’s surface, Natural State seeks to contribute to this ‘through large-scale restoration and rewilding’, whereby they will ‘secure biodiversity, sequester and store carbon, and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals’.52 Along these lines, the organisation looks to develop technology – including acoustic sensors and drones – to measure and monitor the impact of conservation activities, in order to produce ‘robust and cost-effective site-level data’. This data would, according to Natural State, ‘help unlock billions of dollars for nature’ in part through pioneering new forms of conservation financing, including ‘an Integrated Carbon and Biodiversity Credit, Rewilding Credit, and Single Species/Custodian Credit’.53
Natural State have taken the lead to promote ORKCA as a par excellence case of ‘rewilding at scale’, arguing that their efforts would ‘ecologically restore the fragile semi-arid ecosystem, quadruple the number of native grazers and predators, restore wildlife migration patterns, secure fifteen million tCO2-e and triple employment in the region through eco-tourism’.54 Similar to the operations of agencies like the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, which works with major banks and manufacturers to investigate and report on the impact that companies have on the environment, it appears that Natural State has tried to position itself and its supported projects as a means through which corporate funds could be channelled towards ecological regeneration programmes.
It follows, then, that Natural State would need to conduct research and monitoring programmes, develop appropriate technology to quantify corporate ecological damage and prove that corporate dollars are indeed regenerating what has been degraded.55 Natural State utilises new remote imaging technologies, acoustic measurement devices, and camera traps to build
When asked about the applicability of his SOC sequestration methodologies in hyper-arid landscapes like southern Namibia, where rainfall is well under 100 millimetres per annum, Mark Ritchie remarked that he would not try SOC projects in any area with less than 250 millimetres of rainfall. Furthermore, he believed that where there were steep mountainous areas – with gradients exceeding 10 degrees incline, like much of southern Namibia – a good deal of the land has to be effectively removed from the calculations of SOC sequestration, because carbon will not accumulate as much where land is too steep and rocky.58
With Natural State and their best-in-class partners, we will be using aerial and ground level remote sensing data, including aerial scans, LiDAR technology, camera traps, and acoustic sensors, along with satellite data, to measure changes in carbon and biodiversity as the land transitions from a degraded to a restored state. This data will be used to inform AI modeling systems that will enable the analysis of vast datasets to quantify impact over time. The technology will be used to measure different impact parameters, such as above-ground carbon, soil organic carbon, species richness, relative abundance, functional diversity, and financial benefits to local communities, providing the rigor and transparency
needed to catalyze nature-based solutions markets. All of the resulting data will be extremely useful in modeling for similar properties within the wider ORKCA landscape, as well as being scalable to other arid and semi-arid landscapes.59
Perhaps the amounts of tCO2-e sequestered would be less than in the NKGCP, but evidence suggests that the team at Natural State and ORKCA believe that SOC sequestration would nevertheless occur. Furthermore, ORKCA also seeks, through their relationship with Natural State to tap into other kinds of conservation finance, including their ‘integrated carbon and biodiversity credit’ scheme, whereby the credit purchased would reflect perhaps only a small amount of carbon sequestered but it would purportedly represent broader biodiversity gains.60
Natural State’s ‘biodiversity credit’ idea is rooted in subtle shifts in the conservation finance market over the past several years.61 Carbon finance is based on an understanding of atmospheric universality: one tCO2-e emitted in one country is equivalent to one tCO2-e sequestered in another. There are important ongoing scientific debates about how one precisely measures this and calculates equivalency, but this is accepted by many within the carbon finance sector as well as many scientific researchers. Biodiversity, however, is more qualitative; protecting a wetland in Uganda does not necessarily equate to destroying one in Florida.62 This is increasingly being challenged, however, with some critics alluding to consumer price indices as comparisons. Although the content of the ‘basket’ of goods that one uses to calculate inflation rate and other economic indicators may vary from country to country, one may nevertheless compare composite baskets.63 As it relates to biodiversity credits, this may mean valuating a ‘basket’ of five or more ecological metrics – such as abundance of a specific species, soil health and air quality – and tracking the
In contrast to the universality of carbon offset credits, most biodiversity credit schemes are proprietary and specific to each company, NGO or country pioneering them. This is not very surprising, however, because biodiversity as an ecological concept is far more qualitative in essence; it is not as universal as tCO2-e. Biodiversity credit companies and projects have leaned into this fact, proposing that their vast array of new data from new technologies could be individualised to the specific hectare of land via distributed ledger (blockchain) technology and reported back to the buyer.65 This is the position of South African company ValueNature, which plans to use blockchain technology to ‘represent various biodiversity indices in a scorecard format’.66 ORKCA staff are leaning in this direction as well, arguing that non-fungible tokens (NFT s) and ‘conservation investment in the blockchain’ is in the near future.67
This is a troubling trend. Individualising biodiversity programmes and ecological regeneration – such that theoretically a buyer could trace each and every hectare of rejuvenated land – ultimately renders the equivalence of the units null and void. Each tCO2-e released into the atmosphere is anything but unique, and multinational corporations are not meticulously documenting each hectare of tropical rainforest removed in the Amazon and the Cerrado. Destruction is generalised, pollution is generalised. As biodiversity credits become more specific and individualised on the blockchain – such that no two credits are identical – enforcement and oversight completely disintegrate. When Netflix purchased 180,000 carbon offset credits from the Northern Rangelands Trust, the company had no intention of examining each and every credit: it would be impossible. Verifiers of biodiversity credits – if they ever
Throughout our interviews with representatives from ORKCA, Natural State, Oana, and/or other parallel co-traveller organisations, we have been unable to find a single report or single person who has been able to clearly and meaningfully articulate how they are quantifying biodiversity – a category pregnant with individual value judgements – in the context of conservation finance. Furthermore, biodiversity credits appear limited to non-human ‘nature’, and contain little to no information about human rights, ancestral land, culture or the destruction of the lives of humans who live on or have lived on these lands. The eviction of Indigenous peoples does not necessarily reduce the ‘value’ of biodiversity credits.68 On a more ecological level, though, biodiversity as a whole requires weighing positives and negatives of various environmental interventions. Let us briefly examine the relationship between carbon and Prosopis as an example.
From the very first days of Oana’s operations as an ‘adventure tourism’ destination to ‘rewild’ KumKum and the Orange River area, Ian Craig and his employees Andreia Pawel and Ed Barthorp targeted the invasive tree species Prosopis glandulosa (honey mesquite). Oana partnered with an English company, Mossy Earth Ltd,69 to fund the planting on KumKum of a ‘tree nursery’ for quiver trees (Aloidendron dichotomum) – not actually a tree but an aloe, native to the arid regions of southern Namibia and the Northern Cape. Despite quiver trees not sharing an ecosystem with Prosopis, Oana and Mossy Earth implied that the invasive Prosopis threatened the biodiversity of the region, including the quiver tree; thus, Prosopis had to be removed en masse.70
Originating from the south-western United States and Central America, Prosopis was brought to southern Africa during the mid-twentieth century by commercial farmers – including R.G. Niemöller – who cultivated fields of them to harvest the seed pods.71 The pods can contain, on average, thirteen per cent protein and thirty per cent sucrose, which makes them attractive as a fodder, which is ground up and mixed with grasses or lucerne. Depending on rainfall
Prosopis is indeed invasive. The spread of its seeds occurs through natural means (water and wind, for example), as well as through the digestive tracts of animals. While scholars acknowledge that domesticated livestock can facilitate the spread of the seeds, many research studies in Arizona and Texas have used controlled experimental ranges to study the causes and effects of Prosopis growth. These studies have noted that without a large-scale fire regime, Prosopis spreads equally well – if not better – in areas protected from livestock.73 This is in part because of the species’ adaptability to dryland environments, but also because of the presence of wild animals, rodents and other means of spreading the seeds to other locales. As early as the 1980s, scholars understood that expansion of Prosopis did not necessarily mean a ‘degradation’ of the landscape, though it did mean an economic harm to one single
It is spread by livestock and has deep roots which win the race against other plants for nutrients and water, killing off our indigenous flora. It’s a nightmare of a plant and needs getting rid of. Together we will continue to eradicate it quadrant by quadrant and poisoning the stump to ensure it does not return. Once the Prosopis is cleared hopefully our bird life will flourish once again.76
Oana staff burning Prosopis on KumKum
STILL FROM OANA PROMOTIONAL FILM, 2020
Most studies of Prosopis show that once the bush grows into a tree at canopy stage, not only does it provide shade for wildlife and roosting places for birdlife, as well as fixing soil nitrogen, it also acts as a ‘nutrient pump’, bringing water and minerals from deeper soils closer to the surface. This is the origin of the hypothesis that woody bush encroachment creates ‘islands of fertility’ that bring additional benefits to flora and fauna.77
More pertinent for ORKCA, however, is that woody bush encroachment often represents the largest gain in soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in arid and semi-arid landscapes.78 Across the board, an abundance of studies have found that eradication of Prosopis and bush encroachers – whether by
The ORKCA team’s goals of both sequestering fifteen million tonnes of CO2 equivalent and removing invasive species that allegedly threaten biodiversity reveals some of the contradictions of ‘integrated carbon and biodiversity credits’. When we presented this quandary to individuals sympathetic to ORKCA and Natural State, few had constructive answers. Most responded that although Prosopis does sequester carbon, it is also an invasive species, and that native plants were inherently better for biodiversity. Ultimately, as one prominent conservationist familiar with and supportive of ORKCA and Natural State (and who wished not to be named in this study) remarked: ‘even though they are called Natural State, what they really look for is a Desired State’.
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This last quotation sums up most ‘rewilding’ efforts taking place on southern Namibian landscapes. The historical and ecological evidence that we have presented over the course of this book reveals that while climate change and persistent drought have made it harder to farm over the past decades, individuals have found ways to continue making use of the land. ORKCA’s teleological belief in inevitable degradation if any farming continues simply does not hold up. From livestock to rhinoceros to carbon to Prosopis, under the microscope ORKCA’s rewilding resembles less and less a meaningful ecological project. Truly ‘rewilding’ to the Orange River region’s ‘natural state’ may actually mean
These views are held not only by Ian Craig and his disciples on Oana. When we met Adriaan Mulder (Sean Gilbertson’s local manager on Sandfontein), he spent nearly half the interview explaining that Prosopis seeds had been spread almost entirely by Willem Basson’s goats, seeming to forget that the Prosopis problem extended hundreds of kilometres upstream along the Orange River as far as the Free State. When we reminded him that, in September 2021, a team of mammal ecologists from the University of South Africa used Prosopis seeds from Homsrivier to help identify baboon droppings, Mulder quickly changed the subject.81 One could reason that the invasive prosopis question was more than just a way for young conservationists to rally behind a ‘rewilding’ scheme – it was possibly also an ostensibly apolitical, scientific means to advocate for evicting Black farmers from conservationists’ ‘desired state’ along the Orange River. In the words of Pete Morkel, ‘When I go down to my river banks, I don’t want to step in cow shit’.82
ORKCA has situated itself on the cutting edge of new technologies that could theoretically open up new avenues of funding for ‘conservation’ and ‘rewilding’ projects and programmes. This involves finding new ways to convince those who buy credits that landscape improvement is indeed happening. Whether that could be done with traditional soil core sampling, camera traps and acoustic devices to prove ‘biodiversity’ gains, or by training AI predictive models, the ORKCA team is on board. If you cannot measure it, then you cannot sell it. But although ORKCA appears new and cutting edge, its views are not. For the Bassons and other river-folk who seek to continue their pastoral activities unmolested, it makes little difference whether it is an apartheid-era capitalist farmer or a post-apartheid ‘conservationist’ who blocks their way. It is outsiders who have come and sought complete control over more than 150,000 hectares of their ancestral lands, from which they and their forebears have fed their families for centuries. New technologies may be used to assist in
This book has ultimately been the tracking of a moving target – not only has ORKCA evolved as an organisation while we have been studying it, but conservation finance markets have also undergone great changes over the past year. In January 2023, a nine month investigation by news agencies Die Zeit, The Guardian and SourceMaterial into forest carbon offset credits certified by Verra came to a close. Examining more than one hundred million certified forest credits, the research concluded that Verra had drastically overstated its results.83 It found that, in many cases, the additionality of specific projects was downright fraudulent, and where additionality was possible, carbon sequestration figures had been inflated by up to four hundred per cent. Much of this had to do with Verra’s methodology itself, which constantly overestimated the ‘threat’ that various landscapes were facing.84 Verra responded to this investigation by stating that for each project that underperforms, there is another that overperforms, yet they were unable to furnish evidence of this claim. In March 2023, Verra issued a press release declaring that it was substantially revising its methodologies regarding forest credits, though it was unclear how this would affect existing projects.85
Similar accusations have been flung at SOC sequestration schemes, primarily at the largest SOC scheme in the world, the Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project. In January 2023, two leading researchers from the indigenous rights NGO, Survival International, wrote to Verra claiming that the project ‘is fundamentally flawed at all levels’.86 Expanding on this analysis in a report titled Blood Carbon, the organisation argued that the project’s claim for additionality – that traditional grazing inherently leads to degradation – is not
On 10 March 2023, Verra officially placed NKGCP on hold, suspending all future credit issuances until a review was completed.88 Verra implied that the decision was part of its general review of all large carbon offset schemes, likely prompted by the forest carbon credit scandal, but the timing seems to imply that the Survival International report had something to do with Verra’s decision to review the scheme.89 Mark Ritchie condemned Survival International’s report as lacking scientific rigour, and stated that new findings of SOC gains are awaiting publication after peer review.90 In the NRT’s 2023 Annual Report, which dedicates many pages to the purported success of the NKGCP, it is not mentioned at all that its carbon project had been put on hold by Verra.91
Nevertheless, over the course of 2023, the NRT and its partners were obligated to respond to a series of inquiries from Verra’s review board regarding how the NRT and NKGCP communicated the project to Kenyan conservancies and crucial questions relating to implementation. Many of their responses continued to justify the NKGCP on the basis of old ‘tragedy of the commons’ fallacies.92 Other responses perplexingly claimed that the pre-NKGCP grazing
The carbon market is volatile and controversial, yet when projects position themselves correctly they are able to reap large financial rewards from it. Although we have quite a bit of data for how Ian Craig’s projects in Kenya are operating and seeking to sequester carbon, ORKCA’s situation in Namibia is still in flux. At the time of writing, no project had been formally proposed to Verra, and it was unclear if it would take shape as an SOC sequestration project or a biodiversity credit scheme.94 Regardless, ORKCA is still young, but it is being shaped by individuals and projects that are long established. The final section of this book reviews the question of the Bassons and the river-folk, examining some of the social, cultural and (crucially) legal means that they are using to hold onto their ancestral lands. As stated earlier, we are observing a moving target, and our analyses are inherently shaped by the situation at the time of writing.
Pete Morkel, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 19 October 2022).
Ian Craig, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 18 October 2022).
R.P. Lejano, W. Shan Kan and C.C. Chau, ‘The Hidden Disequities of Carbon Trading: Carbon Emissions, Air Toxics, and Environmental Justice’, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 8 (2020), pp. 1–6.
UNFCCC, Achievements of the Clean Development Mechanism, 2001–2018: Harnessing Incentive for Climate Action (2018).
D. MacKenzie, ‘Making Things the Same: Gases, Emission Rights and the Politics of Carbon Markets’, Accounting, Organizations, and Society, 34 (2009), p. 443.
See details and revision in UNFCCC, ‘Report of the Conference of the Parties on its Nineteenth Session, held in Warsaw [FCCC/CP/2013/10/Add.3]’ (11–23 November 2013), pp. 11–13.
M. Paterson, ‘Governing Mobilities, Mobilising Carbon’, Mobilities, 9, 4 (2014), pp. 570–584.
See S. Sullivan, ‘Banking Nature? The Spectacular Financialisation of Environmental Conservation’, Antipode, 45, 1 (2013), p. 205.
R. Felli, ‘On Climate Rent,’ Historical Materialism, 22, 3–4 (2014), pp. 251–280.
H. Lovell, H. Bulkeley and D. Liverman, ‘Carbon Offsetting: Sustaining Consumption?’ Environment and Planning A, 41 (2009), pp. 2357–2379.
Climate Wedge Ltd, ‘Company Overview’ http://www.climatewedge.com/company.html (Accessed 30 June 2023).
See T. Fischer and H. Knuth, ‘Grün getarnt’, Die Zeit (19 January 2023).
Although Verra’s offset programmes are from many sectors – renewable energy, waste disposal, emissions capture and others – they are most known for their relationship with REDD+ schemes (reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries), which protect and replant forests. Verra also receives a small cut of all credits sold under their auspices.
See G. Borgström, The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine (New York, Macmillan, 1972 [1965]), pp. 74–76. Björn-Ola Linnér, ‘The World Household: Georg Borgström and the Postwar Population-Resource Crisis’ (PhD thesis, Linköping University, 1998), pp. 205–206.
Lejano et al., ‘The Hidden Disequities of Carbon Trading, pp. 1–6.
See Dempsey and Bigger, ‘Intimate Mediations of For-Profit Conservation Finance’.
See ‘The Northern Kenya Rangeland Carbon Project: Partners’, Northern Rangelands Trust https://www.nrt-kenya.org/carbon-project-partners
M.E. Ritchie, ‘Natural Selection of Optimal Foraging Behavior in Columbian Ground Squirrels’ (PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1987).
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022).
See ‘Solutions through Soil’, Soils for the Future https://www.soilsfuture.com/welcome
Verra Verified Carbon Standard database (hereafter, VCS) no. VM0032: ‘Methodology for the Adoption of Sustainable Grasslands through Adjustment of Fire and Grazing’ (version 1.0, 16 July 2015).
VCS no. VM0032, sec. 2.1, pp. 4–5.
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022).
VCS no. VM0032: sec 2.3, p. 9.
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022).
VCS Project 1468: ‘Proof of Concept Document’ – 21 July 2015. The NRT refers to it in their promotional materials as ‘rangelands project’ rather than ‘grasslands project’, but the latter is the legal name for the project.
IAWB: ‘Livestock to Markets’, NatureVest. https://web.archive.org/web/20150621062742/http://www.naturevesttnc.org/our-projects/lands/livestock-to-markets/
VCS Project 1468: ‘Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project: Project Description’ – 15 June 2015.
VCS Project 1468: ‘Proof of Concept Document’ – 21 July 2015.
VCS Project 1468: ‘Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project: Project Description’ – 15 June 2015.
NRT-Kenya, ‘Frequently Asked Questions about the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project’, Northern Rangelands Trust https://www.nrt-kenya.org/carbon-project-faq (Accessed 1 June 2023)
VCS Project 1468: ‘Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project: Project Description’, sec. 2.3, pp. 17–18.
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022).
IAWB: ‘Investing in Conservation and Communities: How Impact Investment Generates Benefits for People and Nature in Kenya’, NatureVest (May 2015). https://web.archive.org/web/20150701174407/http://www.naturevesttnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/LTM_Infographic.pdf
See Fox, ‘The 2017 Shooting of Kuki Gallmann’, pp. 225–226.
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022). This included using NDVI infrared satellite imagery, as well as NASA’s MODIS 16-day composite vegetation indices.
VCS Project 1468: ‘Comments received by Verra during the public comment period 12 January 2023 to 11 February 2023 for the verification of the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project’ – 23 January 2023.
VCS Project 1468: ‘Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project VCS Validation Report’ (Aster Global Environmental Solutions Inc, 7 April 2020).
Ian Craig, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 18 October 2022).
The top purchasers were Netflix (180,000 credits), NatWest Bank (120,000), Meta/Facebook (90,000), Kering (75,000) and British Airways (25,000). Most credit sales from the NKGCP are anonymised, however, or referred to simply as ‘NativeEnergy Clients’. See VCS Project 1468: ‘VCU s Issuance’ https://registry.verra.org/app/search/VCS?programType=ISSUANCE&exactResId=1468
Northern Rangelands Trust, State of Conservancies Report, 2023, p. 233.
Ibid, p. 235.
NRT-Kenya, ‘Frequently Asked Questions about the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project’, Northern Rangelands Trust https://www.nrt-kenya.org/carbon-project-faq
Ibid.
Northern Rangelands Trust, State of Conservancies Report, 2023, pp. 266–267.
Ian Craig, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 18 October 2022).
Northern Rangelands Trust, State of Conservancies Report, 2021, pp. 83–84.
Northern Rangelands Trust, State of Conservancies Report, 2023, p. 232.
Andreia Pawel, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 10 October 2022).
Jonathan Baillie, LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-baillie-82379713/ (Accessed 21 November 2024).
S. Jamieson and R. Savage, ‘Prince William Joins Champagne Reception Celebrations for Ex-Girlfriend Jecca Craig’s Wedding’, The Telegraph (26 March 2016).
Natural State, ‘About Us’ https://www.naturalstate.org/about-1 (Accessed 21 November 2024).
Ibid.
Natural State, ‘Restoration and Rewilding at Scale’, https://www.naturalstate.org/restoration-rewilding-at-scale (Accessed 21 November 2024).
Natural State also keeps an office and staff in Kenya near Lewa.
Natural State, ‘Impact’ https://www.naturalstate.org/impact (Accessed 21 November 2024).
See ORKCA, ‘Job Description: Project Coordinator’ https://orkca.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Job-Description-ORKCA-Project-Coordinator-.pdf (Accessed 21 November 2024).
Mark E. Ritchie, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 13 December 2022).
ORKCA, ‘Job Description: Project Coordinator’ https://orkca.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Job-Description-ORKCA-Project-Coordinator-.pdf (Accessed 21 November 2024).
Natural State, ‘Impact’ https://www.naturalstate.org/impact (Accessed 21 November 2024). ORKCA board member Sean Gerrity’s main project, the American Prairie Reserve in Montana, appears to be moving in a similar direction. See C. Freese, K. Kunkel and M. Sommer, ‘American Prairie Reserve: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation through Large-Scale Grassland Conservation’ (2016).
See also, A. Buller, The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. 250–255.
See J. Song, ‘An Incomplete Guide to Biodiversity Credits’, Conservation Finance Network (14 February 2023).
‘Biodiversity Credits’, Operation Wallacea https://www.opwall.com/biodiversity-credits/
World Economic Forum, Biodiversity Credits: Unlocking Financial Markets for Nature-Positive Outcomes (September 2022), p. 8. See also ‘Biodiversity Credits’, rePLANET https://www.replanet.org.uk/what-are-biodiversity-credits/. See also the definition by the Colombian company Terrasos, ‘Protocol for Issuing Voluntary Biodiversity Credits: Executive Summary’, Terrasos (2022).
Z. St. George, ‘Pricing Nature: Can Biodiversity Credits Propel Global Conservation?’ Yale Environment 360 (6 April 2023) https://e360.yale.edu/features/biodiversity-credits
See ‘Our Credits’, ValueNature https://valuenature.earth/#credits (Accessed 30 June 2023).
Andreia Pawel, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 10 October 2022).
This has been proposed by proponents of biodiversity credits, but never implemented or systematically considered. See A. Ducros and P. Steele, Biocredits to Finance Nature and People: Emerging Lessons (London, IIED, 2022).
UKCHA #10927633: Certificate of Incorporation of a Private Limited Company (22 August 2017).
‘Building a Tree Nursery: Preparing for Future Restoration and Habitat Restoration’, Mossy Earth https://www.mossy.earth/projects/building-tree-nursery (Accessed 1 February 2023).
Louise Niemöller, interview with Bernard C. Moore (Pofadder, 21 January 2022).
R.W. Bovey, Mesquite: History, Growth, Biology, Uses and Management (College Station, Texas A&M University Press, 2016), p. 24.
D.M. Browning and S.R. Archer, ‘Protection from Livestock Fails to Deter Shrub Proliferation in a Desert Landscape with a History of Heavy Grazing’, Ecological Applications, 21, 5 (2011), pp. 1629–1642. For a southern African case of this, see B.J. Wigley, W.J. Bond and M.T. Hoffmann, ‘Bush Encroachment under Three Contrasting Land-Use Practices in a Mesic South African Savannah’, African Journal of Ecology, 47 (supp. 1) (2009), pp. 62–70.
R.A. Virginia and W.M. Jarrell, ‘Soil Properties in a Mesquite-Dominated Sonoran Desert Ecosystem’, Soil Science Society of America Journal, 47, 1 (1983), pp. 138–144.
Steven R. Archer, Professor Emeritus: University of Arizona, interview with Bernard C. Moore (telephone, 26 May 2023).
IAWB: ‘Oana Flora and Fauna: Management’ (11 February 2018). https://web.archive.org/web/20180211220335/http://oana-ff.org/management
S.R Archer, T.W. Boutton and K.A. Hibbard, ‘Trees in Grasslands: Biogeochemical Consequences of Woody Plant Expansion’, in E.D. Schultze et al. (eds.) Global Biogeochemical Cycles in the Climate System (Amsterdam, Academic Press/Elsevier, 2001), pp. 115–137.
R.L. McCulley et al., ‘Soil Respiration and Nutrient Cycling in Wooded Communities Developing in Grassland’, Ecology, 85, 10 (2004), pp. 2804–2817.
T.R. Filley et al., ‘Chemical Changes to Nonaggregated Particulate Soil Organic Matter Following Grassland-to-Woodland Transition in a Subtropical Savanna’, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 113, G3 (2008), pp. 1–11. Bovey, Mesquite, p. 102. Research in southern Africa confirms the association of Prosopis encroachment with increased SOC. See A. Mureva et al., ‘Soil Organic Carbon Increases in Semi-Arid Regions while it Decreases in Humid Regions Due to Woody-Plant Encroachment of Grasslands in South Africa’, Scientific Reports, 8,. 15506 (2018). S. Mosweu et al., ‘Modification of Soil Properties by Prosopis L. in the Kalahari Desert, South-Western Botswana’, Open Journal of Ecology, 3, 2 (2013), pp. 145–150. However, the abundance of termite intrusions in the region can lead to surface SOC being brought deeper into the sub-surface soil; see S. Mosweu, ‘Environmental Factors and Management Options for Prosopis Invasive Species: A Case Study in Botswana’s Kgalagadi District’ (PhD thesis, North West University, 2012), pp. 87–90.
McCulley et al., ‘Soil Respiration and Nutrient Cycling’. Archer et al. ‘Trees in Grasslands’.
Adriaan Mulder, interview with Bernard C. Moore and Luregn Lenggenhager (Homsrivier farm, 12 November 2021). The team represented T. McIntyre’s ecology lab at UNISA. Candice Lewis and Tracy Basch, interview with Bernard C. Moore (Homsrivier farm, 19 September 2021).
Pete Morkel, interview with Bernard C. Moore and Luregn Lenggenhager (Pelgrimsrust farm, 10 November 2021).
P. Greenfield, ‘Revealed: More than 90% of Rainforest Carbon Credits by Biggest Certifier are Worthless, Analysis Shows’, The Guardian (18 January 2023).
Tin Fischer and Hannah Knuth, ‘Phantom Offsets and Carbon Deceits’, Die Zeit (19 January 2023).
P. Greenfield, ‘Biggest Carbon Credit Certifier to Replace its Rainforest Offset Scheme’, The Guardian (10 March 2023).
VCS Project 1468: ‘Comments received by Verra during the public comment period 12 January 2023 to 11 February 2023 for the verification of the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project’ – 23 January 2023.
S. Counsell, Blood Carbon: How a Carbon Offset Scheme Makes Millions from Indigenous Land in Northern Kenya (Survival International, March 2023).
VCS Project 1468: C. McCarthy, Director of VCS Program Management to J. Worden, Northern Rangelands Trust ‘Section 6 Quality Control Review Notification’ – 17 March 2023.
A. Mukpo, ‘Carbon Credits from Award-Winning Kenyan Offset Suspended by Verra’, MongaBay (21 March 2023).
Mark Ritchie did not respond to our repeated follow-up questions concerning the suspension of the NKGCP and Survival International’s critique of his methodology. Ritchie and his team have continued to publish about the success of his VM0032 and SNAP methodology for measuring SOC capture, though he does not appear to have directly addressed any of Survival International’s critiques about additionality, leakage or societal impact. M.E. Ritchie et al., ‘Increased Pastoralist Livestock Mobility is Associated with Large-Scale Rangeland Restoration and Soil Carbon Sequestration’, agriRxiv (2024). Mark Ritchie has since left his position at Syracuse University.
Northern Rangelands Trust, NRT Annual Report, 2023. The NKGCP’s website also makes no mention of it: https://www.northernkenyacommunitycarbon.org/ (Accessed 1 May 2024).
[‘Without the project, livestock management in the region would likely continue to drive a cycle of impoverishment associated with continuous grazing, loss of soil organic matter and forage productive capacity’.] See Verra, ‘Section 6 Quality Control Review: 1468 – Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project’ [Final Issue] (22 November 2023), p. 14.
Ibid, pp. 29–30.
ORKCA still claims that the project will sequester 15 million t-CO2-e. The ORKCA team also took a trip with Natural State to visit the latter’s new research centre near Lewa in Kenya, as well as visit the NRT itself. ORKCA also intends to raise additional revenue through ‘joint-venture irrigation farming’ of ‘high-yield’ crops. Perhaps the Orange River as an irrigation zone will continue in the future, though with the landowners branding themselves as ‘conservationists’. See Andreia Pawel, interview with Ben Goldsmith, Rewilding the World Podcast (23 January 2024).