Carbon Credits Not Benefiting Poor African Farmers

Carbon offset projects that are meant to supposedly compensate farmers and poor people in Africa for continued pollution in industrialized countries in the north are not benefitting them hence defeating the noble idea.

Instead it is the foreign based companies and international financial institutions that benefit yet farmers are left to wallow in poverty.

"It is unfortunate that through a carbon global market that these wealthy nations enable their wealthiest investment firms and most polluting corporations to benefit at the expense of the poor African farmers who are entitled to benefit," Mwenda Mithika, the executive director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), said late on Friday.

Mwenda observed that through their investments, the firms that have investments in soil, forests and other natural resources are instead justifying their continued pollution by evading their responsibilities to cut their own emissions and provide public funds to developing countries.

"Most of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects are non- existence on the ground in most countries yet expatriates from the north continue to earn huge salaries," he said.

In Kenya, according to Mwenda, the Mumias Sugar Company biogas project and the Olkaria geothermal project are the only projects that have succeed yet many exist only on paper through organizations that are unable to justify their existence.

"CDM is not failing Africa because there is little opportunity to create offsets, but because it is diverting scarce public resources away from directly addressing climate change," he added.

He noted that the intention of carbon offsets is to help industrialized countries to delay reducing emissions at source.

"To generate significant volumes of credits, projects will typically be located somewhere that high emissions are already the problem but this is not the case for most sub-Saharan Africa," he noted.

He however accuses government officials of failing to defend the poor and instead look at what stands to benefit them as they are easily manipulated at international meetings.

He observed that the priority for Africa at the international climate change meetings is how the poor farmers can benefit through adaptation.

Mwenda called for the release of the US$10 billion that was pledged by the developed countries as start finance for the year 2010-2012.

"Lack clarity on the funding puts US$100 billion that was earmarked for the year 2012- 2020 by the Copenhagen Accord in jeopardy since so far only the framework exist but no donor has honored their pledge as was agreed," he noted.

Director of Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG) Benson Ochieng observed that the governments in sub-Saharan Africa has well written policy and acts of parliaments that unfortunately are not used in changing the trend of development.

He noted that for any development to take place in Africa, development plans such as policies must be put in use by governments.

Ochieng called on the Kenyan government to recognize experts on climate change by engaging them often during Committee of the Parties (COP) conferences.

"A number of experts who happens to come from Kenya are senior and knowledgeable at the United Nations and could be of great help in negotiating with the developing countries," he noted.