The Role of the Northern Kenya Rangeland Carbon Project in Grassland Restoration

Historically, people in northern Kenya moved their livestock across huge territories in search
of pasture.

In recent years, these communities have shifted from nomadic to semi-nomadic / sedentary living, settling in places with permanent water sources, schools, clinics, and other permanent infrastructure. By establishing permanent homesteads, livestock often graze in the same region all year instead of moving seasonally, resulting in overgrazing.

Overgrazing has damaged soils, resulting in a significant reduction in grass that grows back each year. As a result, cattle are becoming less healthy and profitable, and herders are increasingly fighting over limited resources. Overgrazing also harms ecosystems that are crucial for conservation, particularly habitat for endangered wildlife.

Key Activities of the Northern Kenya Rangeland Carbon Project

Rotational Grazing – Theory of Change

Herders are encouraged to take the lead in grassland restoration by banding together and planning and rotating where they graze their livestock. Soil health improves with rotational grazing, resulting in increased plant cover and higher-quality pasture for cattle. Animals in better condition generate more milk and meat and command higher market prices.

Rotational grazing reduces soil erosion and keeps rivers cleaner. It raises surface water levels and causes the soil to store more water, allowing more pasture to grow even in dry seasons. Increased pasture growth results in more carbon being added to the soil, which raises the carbon content in the soil. By obtaining consistent carbon funding, herders can plan and rotate where their livestock graze, leading to the restoration of more than two million hectares of savannah grasslands in an increasingly arid area.

Carbon-rich soils store more water and produce more forage during dry periods. This project assists people in Northern Kenya in adapting to the consequences of climate change and acts as a drought buffer, reducing conflict over pasture and improving peace in this sensitive region.

Village Grazing Committees

Each conservancy has a grazing committee, composed of an elected representative from each of the conservancy's villages/zones.

Each committee meets once a quarter to assess existing grazing plans in light of current conditions. They plan grazing movements within the conservancy for the next months twice a year, prior to Kenya's two wet seasons, as wet season plant development is the most vital to protect and manage. Members of the grazing committee also hold zonal or village meetings to discuss grazing plans.

At least twice a year, neighboring conservancies hold regional cluster meetings to coordinate migratory movements between conservancies.

Why Soil Carbon?

The importance and urgency of combating land degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) cannot be overstated. It forms the cornerstone of achieving all Sustainable Development Goals in the region, as soil and land fundamentally represent the main resource upon which livelihoods and economic activity depend. In Kenya, land degradation manifests itself in many ways, including unsustainable loss of vegetation and landscape functions, increasing incidences of aridity and scarcity of water sources, and spread of invasive species. These components are intrinsically linked and act as mutual accelerators of the degradation process. Kenya has been a signatory to United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) since 1997 and has laid out its targets for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) to achieve no net loss of healthy and productive land by 2030. Grassland degradation not only poses an enormous risk to the hundreds of millions of people who rely on them, but also presents a major environmental threat, given the huge amounts of soil organic carbon released to the atmosphere. Thus, restoration of degraded grasslands in Kenya has important climate benefits, including the sequestration of carbon dioxide and improved climate resilience, and it constitutes a priority mitigation activity under her NCCAP (2018) and NDC (2020).

The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), is actively working to reverse soil degradation and promote sustainable land-use management among pastoralist communities. In ASALs of northern Kenya, pastoralists face severe degradation of rangelands in combination with other complex and interlinked challenges such as poverty, insecurity, biodiversity loss and climate change. Over the past 30 years, this landscape has witnessed increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall, which, coupled with overgrazing, poor rangelands management and human and livestock growth, have led to significant land degradation, including loss of grasses and Soil Organic Carbon (SOC). Approximately 70% of the rangelands in the NRT conservancies are highly degraded with over 50% of the area heavily eroded. Soil carbon stocks, a key indicator of soil health and regeneration potential, are critically low (below 3.5 kg/m2) in over 40% of the landscape. A decline in NDVI (a measure of greenness and land productivity) of over 30% in 40% of the landscape was recorded between 2002 to 2016.

Without support to manage grazing, or incentives that promote sustainable land-use practices, the northern Kenyan landscape will degrade further, increasing its vulnerability to climate change whilst losing its potential to bind carbon. With support, restoration of grasslands can increase SOC by 1.4% per year, which is well above the goal of the ‘4 per 1000 – Soils for Food Security and Climate’ initiative launched at the COP21 in Paris in 2015. In line with Kenya’s LDN priorities, NRT has implemented managed grazing and soil restoration as two primary methods to combat land degradation. NRT’s unique approach to restoring these landscapes at scale is based on two interlinked strategies: i) The Grasslands Carbon Project using the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) VM0032; Methodology for the Adoption of Sustainable Grasslands through Adjustment of Fire and Grazing. ii) The NRT Rangelands Strategy, based on over a decade of key lessons learnt on active community engagement and incentivization to enable peaceful coexistence of pastoralists whilst restoring their natural resources (grasslands).

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