Essay by Eric Worrall
More Carbon Credit crimes against humanity?
Kenya’s Ogiek people being evicted for carbon credits – lawyers
By Claire Marshall
BBC Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent
Kenya’s government is illegally evicting hunter-gatherers from their ancestral lands to profit from carbon offsetting schemes, human rights lawyers say.
Hundreds of members of the Ogiek community are being evicted from the Mau Forest, say their representatives.
Ogiek leader Daniel Kobei said armed forest rangers were “pulling down the houses with axes and hammers”.
Kenya’s government says such operations are to protect the environment.
Dr Justin Kenrick from the Forest People’s Programme said that carbon credits and offsetting were “key” to what was happening.
The developing global carbon credit market allows a polluter to emit carbon dioxide or other climate-heating gas and pay a forest owner to capture those emissions through the carbon-absorption power of their trees.
Dr Kenrick argues that by evicting the Ogiek, Kenya’s government is trying to cement its full territorial – and financial – control over an increasingly lucrative asset.
“Those in control of Africa’s forests stand to earn a lot of money,” he said.
“The Mau is Kenya’s biggest forest and in our view it’s clear that the interest shown by offsetting companies is prompting the Kenyan Government to assert its control.
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It is time to boycott any company which publicly declares an investment in carbon credits, just as decent people boycott Chinese goods made by slave labor.
Carbon credit atrocities against vulnerable native people have been happening for years, yet nobody seems to care – Western companies just keep pouring money into these vile schemes. Western corporate desperation for a little virtue signalling just seems more important to them than the fact some of their carbon credit money is being used to fund committing violence against African villagers.
I can understand companies turning a blind eye to rampant carbon credit fraud. Nobody cares if the carbon credits are fraudulent, except when that fraud is exposed. But what kind of monster can turn a blind eye to people being forcibly evicted from their homes, just so carbon credit purveyors can claim their subsidy farm forest is pristine?
It’s time to pull the plug on these blood soaked carbon credits once and for all, and to stop associating with businesses which promote or boast about their use.