We’re so close to winning this campaign, and your support right now could make all the difference.

Survival’s campaign in support of Indigenous people in Kenya whose lands have been taken over by the scandal-ridden Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) has had a huge impact over the last twelve months. Thanks to supporters like you, this once-hidden scandal is now firmly in the spotlight.

NRT’s so-called “community conservancies” were created on the lands of Indigenous Borana, Samburu, Maasai and Rendille people. The armed rangers that guard these areas have committed numerous abuses against the Indigenous people.

A recent report by Lawyers Without Borders detailed “systemic harassment by security forces, restrictions on land access, and even extrajudicial killings”, and revealed that human rights defenders and community leaders are increasingly being targeted.

At the same time, NRT has already made millions from a vast carbon credits project on these lands, while the Indigenous peoples who have lived there for generations are blocked from accessing them.

With your support, Survival’s campaign to stop these abuses has already achieved real change:

• Over the past three years, nearly 10,000 of you have written emails to the carbon credits certifier Verra demanding it cancel the certification which is vital for the project to continue.
  
  Your pressure worked: the project is now suspended for a second time as Verra conducts another review. But this time it must get it right and scrap the project entirely.

• A court case last year confirmed that key parts of NRT’s activities are illegal: two of NRT’s conservancies, heavily funded by Western donors, were declared unconstitutional after judges found they were created without public participation, on community land.

• Our campaign has succeeded in shining a media spotlight on what was previously a little-noticed scandal: global press outlets like Deutsche Welle, the Wall Street Journal, Arte and l’Humanité have highlighted NRT’s intimidation tactics, the violence and harassment linked to its projects, and how the carbon project is being used to push Indigenous people off their lands.
  
  “The [carbon] project completely destroyed the traditional system and brought another one, which is like a displacement”, one of the plaintiffs in the court case told the Wall Street Journal.

Now, we need one final push. Please help us deal the final blow to this exploitative project and write one more time to Verra and NRT’s backers, demanding it’s stopped for good.

Caroline Pearce
Director