Carbon markets paradox and Kenya’s climate action reality

At its simplest level, a carbon credit represents a reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emissions. Companies or countries that emit carbon can buy credits generated through forest conservation, mangrove restoration, regenerative agriculture, or renewable energy. In theory, carbon markets create incentives to protect nature while reducing emissions.

In Kenya, this is no longer abstract. From the northern rangelands to Lamu’s mangroves, carbon projects are emerging as sources of conservation finance and rural income, but they are also drawing criticism.

Some opponents deride them as neocolonialism while some proponents argue the opposite; that markets can give communities more control over land.

Both arguments contain truth, but the simple question quickly gives way to harder ones: Who owns the carbon stored in forests and soils? Who gets paid for protecting it? Who decides whether a project helps or exploits a community?

To navigate these questions, I have been drawing on the framework presented in The Carbon Paradox, a book by Renat Heuberger, Steve Zwick, and Marco Hirsbrunner. Available online and explored most vividly in the book itself, the framework explains carbon finance through engaging fictional storytelling, but without a simplistic split between heroes, villains, and victims.

Instead, it shows how trade-offs become unavoidable when people try to solve “wicked problems”—problems with no clean solution.

It begins with the ethics paradox: Is it ethical to put a price on nature? One answer is no. Another is that failing to price nature often means treating it as worthless.

The nature paradox is trickier. Carbon methodologies deployed to restore forests often stop paying once the trees are fully grown, unless a new threat emerges. This paradox overlaps with the baseline paradox and the additionality paradox.

Combined in a forest context, this means a project must estimate the risk to the forest and show why carbon finance is needed to save it. That sounds logical, but it can leave longtime forest stewards struggling to prove they deserve support.

A lot of the tensions in this book aren’t unique to carbon markets. Land use has always been shaped by ownership, governance, and trust. Who controls the land? Who benefits? Who decides its future? Carbon finance can’t escape those questions.

For Kenya, the lesson isn’t that carbon markets are magic or dangerous. They are one tool inside a struggle over land, livelihoods, justice, and climate action. The better question is: when do they work, for whom, and who gets to decide?

The writer is a climate action enthusiast and a communications specialist at Windward Communications Consultancy.