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Persecuting Maasai
Hundreds of Maasai people have protested in one of Tanzania’s most important tourism destinations over their eviction in the name of conservation.
21 April 2026
The carbon credits certifier Verra has, for the second time, reinstated a hugely controversial carbon credit scheme in Kenya led by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT).
This is despite a 2025 court ruling that two of the largest conservancies set up by NRT had been established unconstitutionally, with no basis in law.
One of these, Biliqo Bulesa, contributes about 20% of the carbon credits to the project. The court ruling could potentially be applied to half of the other conservancies involved.
Despite the enormous question mark this ruling raises over NRT’s entire operation, Verra decided to reinstate the whole 2m-hectare project on the basis of a ‘ratification process’ carried out in just one community – without waiting for the final outcome of the court case, which NRT has appealed and which is still ongoing.
Survival International has warned that this is not only absurd, but potentially damaging for the rights of Indigenous peoples everywhere.
The supposed ‘ratification’ project claimed to secure communities’ FPIC – free, prior and informed consent. But that has to come before a project starts, the organisation says – not ‘bolted on 14 years later, once a court has ruled the whole thing was built on illegal land grabs’.
Survival International says NRT and Verra are not simply patching up a paperwork error; they are trying to retroactively legitimise a project that should never have existed in the first place.
It says the real scandal is that under Verra’s rules, you can sell carbon credits derived from violations of Indigenous people’s rights under international law, let companies like Meta and Netflix buy and trade them for years, and then – once you’re caught – simply fix the paperwork retroactively and carry on as if nothing happened.
That’s not integrity, that’s impunity, says the human rights organisation – and it’s a warning for every company still buying Verra credits, anywhere: if this is what ‘compliance’ looks like, the whole system is little more than a rubber stamp for greenwashing abuses against Indigenous peoples.
The project is currently being restructured in an attempt to make it consistent with Kenya’s laws – raising the question as to how it was ever authorised under Verra’s system, and how it issued millions of credits when it was clearly not compliant with Kenyan law – and in order to obtain communities’ FPIC.
Survival International has learnt that this is being strongly resisted by some communities, and is far from over. Verra’s decision to reinstate the project has completely pre-empted this process.
Hundreds of Maasai people have protested in one of Tanzania’s most important tourism destinations over their eviction in the name of conservation.
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