Imagine being paid for simply breathing. Across Africa, millions of landowners, pastoralists, and coastal communities are waking up to a tantalising possibility: that the carbon in their forests, soils, and oceans could be worth money. But here is the first lesson in climate law; nature does not write cheques. Only deliberate action does.
The Golden Rule
Welcome to the principle of additionality, the invisible gatekeeper of every carbon market on earth. At its simplest, it asks one counterfactual question: would this climate benefit have happened anyway? If the answer is yes, then no credit is due. It is the difference between a real reduction and an accounting illusion.
Now for the mind-bender. Carbon markets are, in principle, designed to pay for carbon removal and emission reductions. You can indeed be paid for pulling carbon from the sky or stopping it from entering the atmosphere. But the market only pays for the extra mile, not the mile you were already walking. It rewards the additional tonne, not the tonne that was already minding its own business in your backyard.
The Carbon Cast
To see why, meet three characters in nature’s drama: the carbon pool, the carbon sink, and the carbon reservoir. A carbon pool is any place that stores carbon; your soil, your forest, the deep ocean floor. A carbon sink actively absorbs more carbon than it releases, like a thriving forest or healthy grassland drawing down atmospheric CO₂. A reservoir is the stable storage itself, the standing timber, the peat, the seabed.
Now, suspend your disbelief. Africa holds perhaps the planet’s most magnificent carbon portfolio. The Congo Basin, Kenya’s northern rangelands, the savannahs, coastal mangroves, and the Indian Ocean’s blue carbon beds are sinks and reservoirs of staggering value. Millions of ordinary Kenyans and African communities stand atop this buried treasure. The burning question is: if my land already stores carbon, why can’t I sell it?
The Legal Journey
The answer is woven through three decades of international climate law. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change planted the seed: climate finance must be “new and additional,” not a rebranding of old aid. Then came the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which turned additionality into hard law. Under its Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, credits could only flow to activities that reduced emissions or enhanced removals beyond what would have occurred naturally.
The Marrakesh Accords later sharpened the blade for forests and land. They declared that the “mere presence of carbon stocks is to be excluded from accounting, as are increased removals due to faster growth caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO₂.” In plain terms: owning a forest does not equal owning a credit. Even if climate change itself makes your trees grow faster, that passive bonus is not yours to sell.
The 2015 Paris Agreement shifted the battlefield to national pledges, but the principle held firm. Article 6 demands that transferred mitigation outcomes be additional to a country’s own climate commitments. The rationale is unwavering environmental integrity: without this fence, nations could claim credits for doing nothing while polluters elsewhere bought the right to emit.
So where is the exception? Human-induced, deliberate intervention. You cannot sell the carbon already in your soil. But if you plant trees where none would grow, restore degraded grassland, protect a forest destined for the axe, or adopt sustainable farming that locks carbon into the ground; those measured, verifiable increments above a strict baseline become creditable.
The law applies three practical tests. First, regulatory surplus: the project must go beyond what national law already requires. Second, common practice: it must outperform typical management in the region. Third, implementation barriers: the carbon revenue must have been necessary to overcome financial or technical hurdles. An individual farmer reforesting a hillside through sheer personal effort may not qualify if the activity was common locally. A community protecting mangroves already mandated by county law gains no surplus. But a county that voluntarily restores a degraded watershed beyond legal requirements, and could not have done so without carbon finance, stands at the threshold of the market.
Another example, if a degraded area in Turkana or Baringo would ordinarily remain barren but is restored through organized intervention, the additional carbon absorbed may qualify under recognized carbon methodologies. Similarly, avoided deforestation projects, regenerative agriculture and ecosystem restoration initiatives may attract carbon finance where proper baselines, monitoring and verification systems are established.
From Soil to Market
For Africans and Kenyans, the growing carbon market presents opportunity; but also risk. Many landowners mistakenly believe that owning trees automatically entitles them to carbon credits. It does not. Carbon markets operate through complex legal, scientific and financial processes involving baseline studies, additionality assessments, monitoring systems, verification and internationally approved methodologies.
This is why expert advisory is essential.
Across Kenya and Africa, climate and carbon advisory firms are increasingly helping communities, institutions and landowners understand how carbon assets may be lawfully structured into viable climate finance and carbon market opportunities through professional carbon assessment, project development and climate advisory services.
The emerging lesson for Africa is therefore clear: forests, soils, oceans and grasslands are valuable carbon assets, but value alone does not create creditability. Under international climate law, it is not mere ownership of a carbon sink or reservoir that generates carbon credits. It is the ability to demonstrate real, measurable and additional climate benefit through deliberate intervention.
As carbon markets continue expanding globally, African communities must approach them with both optimism and clarity. The opportunity is real, but so is the complexity. Understanding the process; scientifically, legally and commercially, may ultimately determine who genuinely benefits from Africa’s vast natural carbon wealth.
By Kibet Kirui, Director, Carbon Wise Africa.
