When “Climate Wins” Come at a Cost

December 30, 2025

Carbon offset schemes promised to be a silver bullet for climate change and economic opportunity in Africa — you protect forests or reduce emissions, sell carbon credits to big polluters in the West, and the money flows back to local communities. In theory, it’s elegant. In reality, the promise has been shaky at best and damaging at worst for many communities across the continent.

The idea behind these schemes is simple: Africa’s wide forests, grasslands and wetlands can absorb huge amounts of carbon. Companies in Europe or North America buy credits linked to that carbon capture to “offset” their emissions. Governments and project developers say this will funnel billions into local economies while preserving ecosystems. Some projections even touted up to $120 billion in annual revenue by 2050.

But for the folks living on those lands, the narrative often feels upside-down. Across countries from Congo to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and beyond, Indigenous and rural communities say that instead of fair economic opportunity, they’ve faced restricted access to ancestral lands, limits on traditional farming or grazing, and broken promises about income. Take forest-based projects under frameworks like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), for example. Critics say these were rolled out with more focus on selling credits to corporations than genuinely helping locals or cutting emissions. In some places, governments and private firms have signed deals without proper consultation or consent from the very people whose land and livelihoods are involved.

Financially, it’s even more tangled. Most of the actual money from carbon credit sales often ends up with project developers, intermediaries, auditors and brokers in richer countries, while communities receive just a sliver — sometimes barely enough to offset the costs they pay in lost land use or disrupted livelihoods. Independent investigations have found that brokers frequently resell credits at huge markups, while locals see only a fraction of the value. Then there’s the question of impact. Many environmental groups argue that these schemes don’t actually reduce emissions in meaningful ways, functioning more as greenwashing tools that let polluters claim virtue while avoiding emissions cuts at source. For pastoralist groups like some Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya, the changes have been far from symbolic: traditional grazing practices get reshaped or restricted to fit carbon project plans, affecting food security and cultural life