"After it was found most offsets did not represent real carbon reductions, the money dried up. But successful schemes such as Kasigau in Kenya now face a stark future"
"Solomon Morris Makau checks the fallen tree for snakes before he wraps a tape measure around the trunk. The early morning sun is overwhelming in the dryland forests of the Kasigau corridor, which separates the east and west Tsavo national parks in southern Kenya. Two guards keep watch for elephants and lions. There is little sign of green among the sprawling acacias, which stand silently in their punishing wait for the end of the dry season. Despite the threat from puff adders, Makau and his team have a job to do: measure the trees and shrubs in this 50 sq metre area to calculate their growth and change in carbon stock.
“This one is lying dead,” says Makau, of one of the trees pushed over by elephants – but tens of thousands around it are still alive, stretching out in the distance as far as the eye can see.
Just two years ago, the survival of these trees – a crucial elephant habitat – was the basis of a multibillion dollar carbon boom that touched almost every large-scale forest on Earth, underpinning the environmental claims of some of the biggest companies in the world. Netflix and Shell were among the companies that bought millions of credits from Kasigau. The market reached more than $2bn (£1.5bn), propelled by a wave of enthusiasm for offsets as a solution to global heating and biodiversity loss. Each credit represented a tonne of CO2 that was not released into the atmosphere from deforestation, theoretically cancelling out emissions from flying, fashion, food and fossil fuels. During the pandemic, leading investment banks formed trading desks for offsets as prices surged from a few dollars to more than $30 a credit for some schemes."
Patrick Greenfield reports for the Guardian with photographs by Edwin Ndeke November 6, 2025.
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