In 2002, a group of foreigners visited ranchers at the boundary of Taita Taveta and Kwale counties to recruit them into the carbon trading business.
This area boasts about 33 ranches that form the Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association (TTWCA), with ranching company boards managing thousands of acres of land.

Some of the board members of Kambanga Ranch inspect a watering point for livestock within the ranch in Taita Taveta County on February 21.
Photo credit: KEVIN ODIT I NATION MEDIA GROUP
Carbon trading is the buying and selling of permits of carbon credits that allow the holder to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
According to members of one of the ranches, whose identities cannot be disclosed to protect their business, the offers they were given looked lucrative at first.
However, as years went by, many of the ranching company members started questioning whether they were really getting a fair share from the carbon trading proceeds. This was largely because of the business’s secretive nature.
“What we are being paid is too little. There was a time when we had a court case and we were asked how the amounts were calculated; we were clueless. We were then asked how many tonnes of carbon we sell annually; we had no idea,” a board member of the ranching company said.
An official at the ranch disclosed that although they have concerns, they are wary of raising them openly because they fear being kicked out of the business by their brokers.
It has emerged that TTWCA is now planning to offer a direct link between local ranching companies and international carbon trading organisations in a bid to have a more transparent business model.
“TTCW will become brokers for carbon trading so that we can manage this business locally,” the association’s vice chairperson Charles Mwaiseghe said.
Mr Mwaiseghe, the secretary of the Kambanga Ranching Company board, said that on average, the 34,000-acre ranch earns between Sh5 million and Sh20 million annually from carbon trading.
The ranch has been using these funds to invest in livestock keeping and it has it employed about 60 people so far.
Apart from payments to the ranches, Mr Mwaiseghe noted that there are no other direct benefits given to the community by carbon trading firms.
However, the strict conservation rules of carbon trading have pushed the groups to be keen on environmental conservation efforts.
At Kambanga Ranch, in addition to ditching cattle bomas constructed with timber and settling for metal and recyclable plastics, green energy is evident from several towers of solar panels that are mostly used to pump water from boreholes. The members say that they acquired the land in 1973 following a 1972 government resolution that the colonial hunting blocks in the region be allocated to Taita communities by turning them into ranches.
The ranching company, which currently has 517 shareholders who are mostly from the Mwatate community, says it received a title deed for the land in 2011. It is currently involved in a dispute with some squatters who have claimed ownership of a 3,700-acre piece of land in Kilibasi area of the vast land.
Last month, the matter was referred to the National Land Commission (NLC) by the Environment and Land Court to be resolved within 90 days.
The court ordered NLC to investigate why residents were in occupation before it was allocated and registered in the name of a ranching company undertaking carbon trade.
Earlier this month, speaking to Climate Action at the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in Gigiri, Nairobi, Dr Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister for Environment, Water and Agriculture, disclosed that Kenya is considered a strategic partner to Saudi Arabia and has entered into a voluntary agreement on carbon credit deals to help the former tackle land degradation issues.
Carbon offsetting has been controversial. Last year, President William Ruto denied that the country had signed any carbon credit deals with a Dubai-based company. The deal would concede millions of hectares of Kenya’s territory to produce carbon credits.
However, he admitted that discussions were underway.
This came after human rights groups alleged that the government was illegally evicting the Ogiek community, which is hunter-gatherer, from the community’s ancestral land to benefit from carbon offsetting schemes.
According to an official statement from the Dubai-based company, the credits would be generated supposedly from restoring and protecting the land. The company would then sell the credits to major polluters to offset their emissions.
While addressing delegates at the just concluded Kenya Carbon Markets Conference 2024, Environment, Climate Change and Forestry Cabinet Secretary of Soipan Tuya said the government is keen on ensuring that Kenya’s new carbon markets framework and regulations that will be released soon respond to the country’s pressing climate action and socioeconomic priorities that include meeting Nationally Determined Contributions as well as contributing to wealth and employment creation.
Speaking during the conference, Ali Mohammed, the special envoy on Climate Change in the Office of the President, said many misconceptions about carbon credit schemes exist in the country largely because of the lack of a proper framework and regulations.
“Carbon markets present many opportunities for Kenya to tap,” he said.
The government has explained that the low earnings of communities that have entered the carbon trading business in the country is a global issue.
Carbon pricing aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by imposing a fee on emitting carbon or incentivising emitting less.
The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) observes that the price signal created consumption and investment patterns shifts, making economic development compatible with climate protection.
“By 2020, 25 per cent of global emissions are expected to be under some carbon pricing mechanism. A large and growing number of non-Annex I countries under the UNFCCC are pursuing carbon pricing: South Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, among others.”