A Conversation the Industry Needs to Have
Carbon markets are growing fast. International demand for high-quality carbon credits from African projects is surging, driven by corporate net-zero commitments, ESG investor pressure, and a genuine global recognition that some of the most impactful emissions reduction opportunities on the planet are located in communities across sub-Saharan Africa.
But alongside this growth, a difficult and uncomfortable question has been getting louder: who is actually benefiting?
In 2023, a series of investigative reports most notably a Guardian exposé on Verra-certified forest carbon projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America raised serious questions about whether the carbon credits being sold to major corporations were actually delivering the promised emissions reductions. But beyond the question of environmental integrity, there was an even more troubling finding: in many projects, the communities living in and around the project areas were receiving almost nothing from the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through the carbon market.
As Carbon90, we believe this conversation is not just important but it is central to what we are trying to build. We are working in Africa, with African businesses and communities. We believe that carbon finance should create genuine economic opportunity for the people who are doing the work and living with the consequences. This newsletter is our attempt to be honest about the problem and clear about what a better approach looks like.
What the Evidence Shows
The structure of most carbon projects creates a power imbalance. A developer, often a foreign company or a well-capitalised local one, identifies a project opportunity in a community. They negotiate land access or community participation agreements, registers the project under an international standard, sells the credits on the global market and retains much of the revenue. Communities are often promised a share of the proceeds but the agreements governing that share are frequently opaque, unenforceable, or structured in ways that delay payment for years.
A 2022 study by the Carbon Market Watch found that in many community-based forestry projects, local communities received between 2% and 10% of the total carbon credit revenue generated by their land. The rest went to developers, standard-setting bodies, brokers, and project management costs. In a market where credits can sell for $20, $30, or even $50 per ton, a community receiving $1 or $2 per ton for protecting forest they have managed for generations is not a partnership. That is what we call extraction.
The problem is made worse by the complexity and opacity of carbon accounting. Community members are often not in a position to independently verify how many credits have been issued, at what price they were sold, or whether the calculations used to determine their share are accurate. This information asymmetry gives developers enormous leverage and creates conditions in which exploitation, even unintentional exploitation, is very easy.
The Land Rights Problem
Underlying many of the community equity issues in carbon markets is a more fundamental problem: land rights. In Kenya and across much of Africa, formal land tenure is contested, overlapping and in many communities entirely absent. Customary land use rights, which may have governed community access to forests and agricultural land for generations, are often not recognised in formal legal frameworks.
This creates a dangerous situation for carbon projects. When a developer seeks to register a forest carbon project, they typically need to demonstrate clear rights over the land where the project is located. In the absence of formal community land titles, developers may approach government entities, traditional authorities, or individual landowners. These may agree to terms without the knowledge or consent of the broader community that actually depends on the land.
The result is that communities can find themselves excluded from carbon revenue generated by their own land. In worse cases, they may find that the carbon project agreements have been used to restrict their access to resources they have always depended on. Things like fuelwood, agricultural land, medicinal plants may have access restricted without any meaningful compensation.
Kenya’s Community Land Act of 2016 promised collective ownership, yet with over 60% of communal land still unregistered as of 2025, many remain legally vulnerable. However, the 2024 Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations have finally introduced teeth to community protection. This new law mandates that land-based carbon projects share a massive 40% of their earnings with local residents through formal Community Development Agreements, finally codifying equity into the Kenyan carbon landscape. Does your country have similar laws to make sure communities get their fair share?
Free, Prior and Informed Consent: What It Means and Why It Often Fails
Every major carbon credit standard, Verra, Gold Standard, Plan Vivo, requires that projects obtain what is called Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from communities before any project activities begin. FPIC is a principle drawn from international human rights law that says affected communities have the right to approve or reject projects that will affect their land, resources, or livelihoods and that this consent must be given freely, before the project starts, and on the basis of full information.
In theory, FPIC is a powerful protection. In practice, it is often treated as a box-ticking exercise. Communities may be consulted in a single meeting conducted in a language that not all members understand, without being given time to reflect, seek independent advice, or understand the long-term implications of what they are agreeing to. The complexity of carbon accounting, additionality calculations and credit pricing is rarely explained in a way that allows community members to make genuinely informed decisions.
There have also been documented cases of FPIC processes that involved only the male heads of household, excluding women who often bear the greatest responsibility for managing natural resources and have the most at stake in how they are governed. Gender-inclusive consultation is not a nice-to-have in carbon project design. This is a fundamental requirement for genuine consent.
When Carbon Projects Get It Right
It would be unfair to suggest that all carbon projects in Africa are exploitative. There are genuinely excellent examples of projects that have transformed community livelihoods while delivering real climate benefits and studying what they do differently is instructive.
Plan Vivo, one of the oldest and most community-focused carbon standards, was specifically designed to channel carbon revenue directly to smallholder farmers and community groups rather than to large project developers. Projects certified under Plan Vivo typically involve community members as the primary project owners and decision-makers, with developers playing a supporting rather than controlling role.
The Kasigau Corridor REDD+ project in Kenya, run by Wildlife Works Carbon, is often cited as one of Africa’s most successful community carbon projects. It has employed hundreds of local community members, funded schools and healthcare, and generated tens of millions of dollars in carbon revenue, a significant portion of which has flowed back to the communities that protect the forest. Crucially, the project was developed in close partnership with the local communities from the beginning, with genuine consultation and long-term benefit-sharing agreements that were negotiated transparently.
What these projects have in common is a shift in the power dynamic. It requires for communities not to be seen as passive recipients of carbon project decisions. They need to be seen as active participants in designing, implementing and governing the projects that affect their land and lives. This requires more time, more investment in community engagement and a willingness by developers and investors to accept lower margins in exchange for more durable and equitable outcomes.
What Carbon90 Believes and How We Operate
We are a small company at an early stage. We cannot single-handedly fix the structural problems of the global carbon market. But we can be intentional about how we operate within it, and we can be honest with the businesses and communities we work with about what fair carbon project design looks like.
When Carbon90 connects an SME to a carbon project developer, we ask questions about benefit-sharing arrangements. We want to know how the developer plans to engage with any communities affected by the project, what percentage of carbon revenue will flow back to local people, and whether benefit-sharing agreements are written clearly and enforced transparently. We will not facilitate connections to developers whose practices we believe are exploitative, even if the financial terms look attractive.
We also believe that education is part of the solution. One reason communities and businesses get poor deals in carbon markets is that they do not know what a good deal looks like. Part of Carbon90’s work is to build knowledge, through newsletters like this one, through direct engagement with SMEs, and through the content we publish, so that more African businesses and communities can negotiate from a position of understanding rather than ignorance.
Carbon markets have the potential to channel enormous resources toward climate solutions in Kenya and across Africa. But that potential will only be realised equitably if the people doing the work, living on the land and bearing the costs of climate change are genuine partners in the carbon economy. They should not be a means to someone else’s profit.
What You Can Do
If you are interested in exploring carbon credit opportunities, ask hard questions about any developer or project structure you are being asked to participate in. Specifically, ask: what percentage of carbon revenue will our business retain? Who else is involved in this project, and what are they getting? How will credits be counted and verified, and will we have access to that information? How long will it take for us to receive our first payment?
If you are part of a community that has been approached about a carbon project on your land, seek independent advice before signing anything. Contact a legal aid organisation, an environmental NGO, or reach out to us directly. You have rights, and you deserve to understand them before you commit to a multi-decade agreement.
And if you are a business or investor reading this who wants to support high-quality carbon projects that genuinely benefit African communities, the good news is that the market is starting to reward ethical project design. Premium buyers increasingly want credits that come with strong social co-benefits and transparent governance, which means that doing the right thing is also, increasingly, good business.
