The Forest People: How ‘Green Colonialism’ Is Hurting Indigenous Kenyan Women

Kenya’s Forest and Wildlife Services are carrying out brutal and forceful evictions of the indigenous Ogiek people from their homes in the Mau Forest, in the country’s Rift Valley. The Ogiek, who historically have been hunters and gatherers, are being stripped of the comfort and security of their homes, with up to 1,000 families sheltering in schools and other exposed areas under intemperate weather conditions.

‘‘When they started the evictions last month, they told us that we had encroached on the boundary of the Mau Forest and had to move out for the government to plant trees,” said Clare Rono, 33, an Ogiek native and community leader from East Mau Forest who spoke to the Women’s Media Center.

But, Rono wondered, “How can this be? How can we, who have lived for generations inside the forest, even in pre-colonial times — and have our ancestors buried beneath its earth — encroach on the boundaries of our homes? We are the forest people.’’

Rono, who works with a community-based organization called the Marioshoni Community Development Forum, believes the persistent illegal evictions of the Ogiek people — despite rulings by the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights that call for the Kenyan government to respect their rights as indigenous people — are closely linked to the government’s involvement with foreign carbon traders and the adoption of carbon offset schemes as a strategy for raising climate finance and addressing climate change.

At the Africa Climate Summit held in September, President Williams Ruto of Kenya reiterated his country’s interest in leveraging the growing global carbon markets for mobilizing climate finance even as he noted that Africa’s carbon sinks were an ‘‘unparalleled economic goldmine.”

Carbon markets are essentially market systems in which carbon credits are negotiated. Polluting entities offset or compensate for their greenhouse emissions by purchasing carbon credits from sellers who remove or reduce emissions or engage in carbon sequestration programs such as tree planting and nature conservation equivalent to the amount of carbon bought.

In October, the Kenyan government entered into an agreement with the Dubai-based firm Blue Carbon in which it conceded millions of hectares of its territory for the production of carbon credits. Also, to bolster its carbon market ambitions, the Kenyan government proposed the Carbon Credit Trading and Benefit Sharing Bill. While the bill has been touted as an instrument to ensure benefits for communities in the country’s carbon trading ventures, it contains a concerning, dismissive definition of “communities”: ‘‘a group of people living around the area where carbon credit trading business is conducted or a group of people who may be displaced to make way for carbon credit trading business.”

And, for indigenous women, “the impact of these displacements is doubly severe,” Rono said of the efforts to relocate whole communities. “The Ogiek women for instance, are custodians of the Mau Forests and play a crucial role in preserving the forest resources and ensuring food security like managing bee hives for honey and cultivating medicinal herbs for the promotion of community health. By displacing us from our ancestral lands, the government is erasing the very foundation of our existence and livelihoods.’’

Climate finance remains critical in advancing climate action, and the global climate discourse has long been anchored in the profound injustice embedded within the crisis. Despite contributing the fewest emissions that precipitate global warming, developing nations and marginalized communities bear the brunt of the catastrophic effects of climate change. Their plight is further compounded by the lack of resources required for adaptation, mitigation, or even managing loss and damage, which leads to severe and irreversible harm associated with the impacts of climate change. Industrialized and wealthier nations responsible for the most emissions heating the planet have consistently fallen short in making reparations and in fulfilling their financial pledges to help poorer countries survive the onslaught of climate disasters.

Last year, COP27 ended with a breakthrough compromise to establish a loss and damage fund, after years of contentious debate over the idea. Following this development, a transitional committee was tasked with developing recommendations for how to get the fund up and running by the end of 2024. However, a final agreement reached by the committee has received heavy criticism from a number of climate advocates.

Critics argue that not only do carbon markets lead to the displacement of local communities, as seen in Brazil and Congo, they also raise concerns about an emerging trend of economic and environmental dominance in the climate discourse.

“You cannot tackle climate change without confronting inequality, but what if this effort risks birthing a new cycle of oppression?” Akinbode Oluwafemi, the executive director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, a pan-African nonprofit organization, told the Women’s Media Center. “It is important to strike a balance where transnational climate policies and agreements advance equity without leading to new injustices.’’

Oluwafemi notes that there is a rising inclination among governments, particularly African states, to believe that marketizing the continent’s land resources as carbon sinks and offsets for polluters is not only spurring green colonialism but also replicating familiar patterns of oppression in Kenya, Uganda, and other places where predators are grabbing the choicest lands on the continent, trampling on community rights and displacing indigenous peoples.

Meanwhile, a report from the Oakland Institute, a California-based think-tank, reveals serious human rights abuses near Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park, part of a $150 million World Bank-backed tourism project. These include the sexual abuse of women by park rangers, violent murders, and the planned evictions of more than 20,000 people to expand the park’s boundaries.

When asked how the Kenyan government can realize its climate ambitions while guaranteeing the recognition of the Ogiek people, Rono emphasized that officials must consult with the Ogiek people and respect indigenous rights, aspirations, and culture while pursuing national climate goals.

“We have never benefitted anything from the government’s conservation plans,” she said. “We were never consulted in its plan for our forests, yet it is our indigenous knowledge, cultural practices and respect for the Mau forests as a living entity that have preserved its essence for years.”

She added a plea to her lament: “Please raise your voices internationally for our rights to be considered so we can live our best lives.’’