ABSTRACT
Africa’s ecological debt has gradually increased in the last two decades, owing to the ‘strategic’ failure of the industrialized world to honour their moral and financial obligations. Instead, efforts to address the consequent climate financing gap have been diverted to market-driven schemes, such as nature-based carbon off-set projects, which technically seek to mitigate climate effects by funding projects which reduce or absorb carbon from the atmosphere. These have however, come under sharp criticism in Africa as ‘false solutions’ and ‘carbon colonial appropriations’ not only for failure to produce concrete evidence of climate mitigation; but also prioritizing profits over human dignity and social safety. Thus, reproducing colonial legacies by perpetuating social injustices and exploitation of local communities through incidences of forceful land evictions, forced displacement, unfair financial benefits, etc. This article proposes the concept of ‘ecological conversion’ in which Pope Francis advocates for adoption of a new economic model based on common good, social justice, dignity and respect for culture and traditions of indigenous communities. It also advocates for adoption of a more just and fair climate finance architecture that can help Africa to realize its full economic potential.
- Introduction
Africa’s climate change paradox is widely established, that whereas the continent’s overall contribution to the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is only 4-5%, it carries the biggest stake of adverse climate shocks, which consume up to 5% of its GDP annually (Mwencha & Atta-Mensah, 2025). As a result, highly industrialized countries owe Africa an ‘ecological debt’ to help the continent mitigate climate-related shocks and, transit and adapt to more sustainable models of development. In 2010, richer countries in the global north, which are also the greatest GHG emitters, pledged to contribute USD 100 billion annually to Green Climate Fund in support the most climate-affected countries. However, this climate fund has been undermined by little commitment to paying their ecological debt, climate change denialism, and shifting geopolitics, for instance, United States’ decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement. Consequently, this has created a critical climate financing gap; thus, hindering climate action in Africa, amidst other existent challenges: adverse poverty, lack of employment, limited economic opportunities, etc. Indeed, Africa’s climate debt is inseparable from its financial debt; hence, should be integrated into its demands for global economical reforms and climate justice (Toussaint et al., 2025). Resultantly, the widening climate finance gap triggered exploration of alternative mechanisms of raising climate finance, such as nature-based carbon off-setting.
In Africa, however, nature-based carbon off-set projects have attracted as much interest as criticism for their failure to show solid evidence of climate mitigation; and shifting the burden of GHG reduction from big emitters in the global north to vulnerable communities (SECAM et al., 2025); thus, perpetuating social injustices; land conflicts and exploitation, many a time in ways that reproduce colonial patterns. This article supports nature-based projects as a mechanism of raising climate finance in Africa; however, hinged on two fundamental conditions advocated by Catholic Social Thought: (a) Ecological conversion from capitalistic and consumeristic attitudes to more sustainable patterns of production; (b) Prioritization of justice as a critical element of long-term sustainability and structural change in the financial architecture.
- Nature-based Carbon Projects
In spite of its emerging interest in the climate change discourse, there is evidence of local communities which applied nature-based approaches and local ecological knowledge to address natural calamities and invariable climate, such as floods and heavy winds (Berkes, Colding & Folke, 2000). Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is an integrated approach that addresses the “twin-crises” of climate change and biodiversity loss while driving sustainable development (Sedon et al., 2025). There are multiple definitions of NbS; however, one provided by International Union for Conservation Nature (IUCN, 2012) is key to this article: Actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified eco-systems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, while providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits. IUCN highlights two critical elements for NbS: human well-being and biodiversity benefits. Mottaghi et al. (2025) emphasize the interconnectedness between human needs and those of nature; thus, NbS have to safeguard both ends.
Examples of NbS include nature-based carbon off-set projects, which in principle entail purchase of carbon credits or carbon off-sets from large-scale projects such as afforestation, safeguard from deforestation and sustainable agriculture, in exchange of permission to keep emitting carbon. Nature-based off-set project are designed to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by either increasing carbon storage or reducing emission. The supposed reduction or additional storage of carbon is then transformed into tradable assets in the carbon markets. Despite their novelty and complexities in design, implementation and governance in Africa, nature-based carbon initiatives have been embraced across the continent. These include a broad range of types: forest protection and afforestation (REDD), agro-forestry, sustainable agriculture and livestock keeping, etc.
- Critique of Nature-based Carbon Projects
The emergence of carbon off-set projects in Africa has not been without pitfalls and challenges; which has attracted increased criticism from civil society organizations, religious leaders, local communities, and field experts. This article spotlights two main critiques: Nature-based carbon projects as false solutions and colonial appropriations.
Nature-based carbon off-set projects as false solutions
Episcopal conferences of Catholic bishops from the Global South – Africa (SECAM), Latin America (FABC), South Asia (SELAM) and Caribbean delivered a message for COP30 in Belem, in a document entitled “A Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home: Ecological Conversion, Transformation and Resistance to False Solutions.” The Catholic bishops critiqued climate solutions such as nature-based carbon projects as false solutions because instead of targeting the main root cause of the climate crisis, i.e., emission of GHG from fossil fuels, this burden is unjustly transferred from big emitters in the global north to vulnerable communities in the global south.
The bishops raised three other concerns regarding nature-based carbon off-sets. One, commodification of nature whereby eco-systems are exploited for financial gain, in such a manner that blurs nature’s intrinsic value and contribution to human survival. Two, carbon markets are driven by capitalism whereby project developers, financers (large foreign corporations) and carbon dealers benefit more at the expense of vulnerable local communities. Three, carbon off-set projects have been associated with cases of exploitation and human rights violations against local and indigenous communities living in areas where projects exist. These include forced displacement, land grabbing and forceful land evictions, which abuse human dignity and break social safety nets by disrupting family cohesion, threatening food security, and eroding employment opportunities (Witness Radio, 2022; Thomas-Peter, 2022).
The critique of carbon projects as false solutions has been fronted elsewhere. For instance, ActionAid (2011) purports that carbon off-set projects are “dangerous diversions” of wealthier countries from their moral and legal obligations to reduce GHG emissions by setting lower limits for their home-based industries, and forcing them to transit to more sustainable models of production. Carbon off-set projects are marked with loopholes, which allow big emitters to keep status quo, while they profit from such schemes and claim “climate leadership” (Wu, 2019). For Climate Justice Hub (2023), NbS have been exploited by large foreign corporations to design carbon projects which “only maintain appearance of balanced carbon ledgers” while permitting pollution; thus, based on an “illusionary” premise that carbon sequestering of nature in one part of the world can actually off-set continued pollution in another.
Carbon off-set projects reproduce colonial legacies
The design and implementation of the current model of nature-based carbon projects reveals policies and practices that reinforce Africa’s colonial regimes. For instance, social injustices that abuse the dignity of local communities whose ancestral lands are forcefully grabbed, without genuine local consultation nor adequate compensation, and usually using military force, reproduces tactics that colonialists used to grab fertile soils from natives. Forceful land evictions for carbon projects are common place in Africa, including Uganda (Witness Radio, 2022) and Republic of Congo (Thomas-Peter, 2022). Inadequate local consultations among the Maasai in northern Tanzania resulted in public rejection of the Volks Wagon carbon project due to inaccessibility to vital grazing grounds (Survival International, 2025).
Soil carbon off-set projects have been implemented in some parts of Africa as a way of promoting agricultural and land management practices that increase the storage of carbon in the soil. However, soil carbon projects undermine traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom that has sustained ancestral working lands and their natural eco-systems for ages. This tendency reproduces the colonial presumption that traditional land management systems, such as pastoralism degrade the environment. For instance, the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project was implemented to replace nomadic system of livestock keeping practiced in the region with a more ‘planned rotational’ system, which would allow prolific vegetation growth, hence store more carbon (Counsell, 2023). However, this project was suspended by a court junction on grounds of lack of credible evidence to support its claims.
The Catholic bishops further note that the current carbon market system reinforces Africa’s dependency syndrome given the conditionalities involved; and even more, concentrates power in foreign corporations and complex regulatory bodies which determine the rates of carbon credits (SECAM et al., 2025). Carbon credits have to undergo validation and verification before they are sold on the maket. However, Africa currently has no carbon validators and auditors (Bendana, 2025), most probably due to the complexity and high cost of capacity-building. The implication is that carbon projects in Africa currently rely on foreign carbon auditors and validators. This consequently deepens power imbalance and undermines Africa’s negotiating power, in terms of government and community benefits; thus, perpetuating the structural problem of unfair terms of global trade, which profit foreign corporations to the disadvantage of Africa.
- Bottom-up approach rooted in Catholic Social Thought (CST)
How can the current system of carbon markets and nature-based carbon projects be remodelled to assure optimal co-benefits for Africa? This article offers two insights rooted in CST. One, over and above NbS, there is urgent need for ecological conversion (EC). This principally entails individual and collective acknowledgement of our anthropological contribution to the social and ecological crisis, hence, resolve to change our mindsets and attitudes towards nature: from dominion to stewardship. In his encyclical letter Laudato Si’, Pope Francis (2015, 159) notes that for one to undergo EC, they ought to ensure that “the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.” For Pope Francis, carbon trading is only complementary to our individual and collective resolve to change human interactions with the environment; short of which they remain false solutions. EC requires “lifestyle change” through radical rejection of the “techno-economic paradigm”, which is driven by capitalism, whose underlying logic is relentless pursuit for capital through overproduction of goods, and consumerism – simply described as the impulsive urge to keep on purchasing (Pope Francis, 150). Overproduction has serious implications: It increases GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion; results in huge amounts of waste in cities and towns; and drives “extractivism” through exploitation of more and more natural resources, hence, exacerbating environmental degradation and armed conflicts. This is demonstrated by the situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and South Sudan.
Two, the planning, design, implementation and governance of carbon projects in Africa should prioritize justice as a critical success factor; which implies fair local participation, incorporation of local worldviews, fair distribution of benefits to local communities; just compensations and genuine remedial mechanisms (Mottaghi, et al., 2025). The Catholic bishops from the Global South emphasize on creation of a novel paradigm that is based on the principles of social justice, cooperation, solidarity with the most vulnerable, respect for territory and local culture. This calls for accountability, transparency and, equity and fairness to improve governance of carbon projects, which will consequently address the problems of inadequate local consultations and land grabbing that are reported in different areas where carbon off-set projects are established. IUCN (2012) emphasize that well-being of the local communities that depend on nature environment where nature-based carbon projects are established is critical for their long-term sustainability. Governance of carbon projects rooted in justice also implies a structural change in the international financial architecture: It should be designed to facilitate Africa’s leap to optimal economic growth and development, and recognition of dignity (Pope Leo XIV, 2025), especially when considered against the background of Africa’s deep financial debt, and the ecological debt owed to industrialized countries.
- Conclusion
This purpose of this article was to critique the current model of nature-based carbon projects in Africa by examining the notion of NbS as false solutions; and highlighting the colonial reproductions of carbon projects. The notion of false solutions is premised on the design of the carbon projects where the burden of reduction of GHG emissions is not only technically transferred to already vulnerable communities in project-affected areas, but also unjustly implemented channel more benefits to project developers. Increased cases of social injustices and human rights abuses perpetuated against the local communities in project-affected areas draws clear synergies with the tactics applied by the colonialists to forcefully acquire fertile lands from natives. This requires more people-centred approaches which prioritize human needs and well-being over profits. The article draws upon CST to propose Pope Francis’ quest for “lifestyle change” that rejects overproduction and consumerism, in order to reduce pollution. Carbon off-set projects should be considered as complementary to GHG emission reductions; rather than hold the illusionary premise that pollution can continue in as far as the polluters pay for it.
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Authors
Augustine Bahemuka MBA is an inter-disciplinary peace scholar, and advocate for environmental justice and integral ecology; affiliated to John Paul II Justice & Peace Centre. His work focuses on Catholic Social Teaching, integral ecology, environmental peacebuilding, and refugees and migration. He serves on the Secretariat of Africa Europe Faith & Justice Network (AEFJN) as Advisor on Climate and Environmental Justice. augustin.bahemuka@gmail.com
Immaculate Tusingwire, MMS is a religious sister of the Medical Missionary Sisters, and currently serves as Communications Manager at Association of Religious in Uganda (ARU). She also serves as the Justice, peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) Co-ordinator at ARU. She is an active member of the Laudato Si Global Membership Council; and Laudato Si Movement Africa. immaculatetusingwire34@gmail.com
