Background
In the negotiations for a post Kyoto climate agreement, Sub-Saharan African countries are engaging in policy processes and demonstration projects around land-use based carbon finance (Bond et al, 2009). Agricultural mitigation and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) are the land use initiatives that dominate international and national policies, agendas and debates, attracting disproportionate political interest and status. REDD in particular has received UNFCCC recognition, (UNFCCC, 2008b), as a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases and increase forest value in developing countries (Stern, 2006; ETFRN, 2008). The recognition of REDD has since been seen by some actors as a window of opportunity to push for climate smart agriculture that embraces agricultural carbon finance (Negra and Wollenberg, 2011). Agricultural carbon finance involves payment received from international donor/aid agencies, private and public sectors and charity organizations mainly in developed countries as a compensation for Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (SALM) practices that capture and store greenhouse gases – or carbon-dioxide equivalents (see Seeberg-Elverfeldt, 2010). Policies for agricultural carbon finance are still under negotiation globally and nationally, and are subject to a number of operational hurdles and conflicting interests (cf Beddington et al, 2012).
In the context of these negotiations, agencies including the UN organizations, the World Bank and agricultural research organizations have set up a variety of programmes and funds to demonstrate how agricultural carbon finance can work and produce multiple benefits. The Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project (KACP) is among the first of such initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2008; 2010b). The project is supported under the World Bank BioCarbon Fund (BioCF) and has worked with groups of smallholders in western Kenya since 2008. KACP and related initiatives are expected to generate lessons for global and national policies for agriculture in the face of climate change. Indeed many studies have examined and supported the logics of such initiatives (e.g. Seeberg Elverfeldt, 2010; World Bank, 2010b; 2011; Moorhead, 2009), explored their regional distributions (e.g. Jindal et al, 2008; Shames and Scherr et al, 2010) and outlined associated opportunities and challenges (Seeberg-Elverfeldt, 2010; Woelcke, 2012; Woelcke, 2011; Woelcke and Tennigkeit, 2011). However, other studies, (e.g. Stabinsky, 2011; Sharma and Suppan, 2011), have labelled the benefits of KACP and similar initiatives as elusive and uncertain.
These research efforts are important. Nevertheless, a question that bothers me as a native of sub Saharan Africa who has spent the better part of his life in an agricultural household is: what actual policy lessons can be generated from these early projects if their interplay with significant, historical local and national realities is not addressed? And why has research been so silent on how this interplay structures decisions, so as to influence actual outcomes on the ground? These are overarching issues that remain unclear (see Corbera and Schroeder, 2011), and are often side lined in project and policy development and evaluation because they are considered ‘sensitive’ – as they are conditioned by differing interests. This study attempts to tell this untold story by unpacking the policy process in a particular agricultural carbon finance project, and exploring its interplay with national and local histories, socio-cultural contexts and interventions. This evidence and analysis may prove useful for building more realistic efforts towards climate justice for agricultural communities, but may also highlight and generate controversy, exposing the extent to which agricultural finance projects are inevitably political.
This study clarifies: (1) the convergence and/or divergence of the narratives held by different actors about the initiative; (2) how these narratives inform the approach used in engaging farmers; (3) how different people think about and justify the project, and (4) the interactive impacts of the project on access and ownership of associated resources, including impacts on livelihoods and ecologies. The analysis focuses on the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project to unpack empirically the policy process in and around it. The policy process analytical framework of Keeley and Scoones (2003) guided the analysis of primary data collected through transect walks, discussions and interviews with farmers and project staff, participant observation, expert consultations and content analysis of key policy documents.
The paper consists of six sections. Alongside this introduction, the policy process analytical framework and data collection methods are discussed as section one. Section two describes the case study project and the associated historical and socio-economic context within which it is implemented. Section three begins to explore the diverse narratives around the project. It examines how narratives at higher – global and regional – levels have developed, drawing particularly on evolving scientific knowledge generated by international research institutions working closely with donor agencies, and how these narratives compare, contrast and intersect with the narratives of Kenyan state actors and farmers. Notably, there is a divergence between current scientific-donor narratives and the narratives of farmers which focus on good farming practices for improved maize production; a divergence structured by earlier agricultural policies and the top-down projectization of recent interventions which limits informed engagements. The fourth section shows how powerful global and project narratives shape the approach used in project implementation and carbon accounting on the ground, conditioned by differing actor coalitions and interests. These interests easily override underlying limiting factors such as weak land tenure systems, water scarcity, illiteracy and gender imbalances. Section five shows how the resulting project implementation process, associated with the interplay between narratives and actor-networks, structures power relations and re-distributes resource rights and benefits. Conclusions and implications – including what opportunities and policy spaces exist for improving the conception, design and implementation of agricultural carbon finance projects are highlighted in section six.
The Politics of Agricultural Carbon Finance: The Case of the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project