05.06.2026
This text is translated from Norwegian by fellow SEED participant Eira Haugbro, and was orginally published on Afrika.no
When Norway uses carbon credits to meet its climate targets, responsibility is shifted away from its own emissions and onto local communities in the Global South. This raises fundamental questions about who bears the costs of climate policy.
Across the entire Global South, local communities continue to bear the burden of a climate crisis they did not create. Despite contributing the least to climate change, countries such as Malawi are experiencing repeated climate-related extreme weather events that worsen food insecurity and hinder development. These realities shape the lives of millions of people. Yet those most severely affected are rarely included in the decisions that impact their lives. At the same time, countries in the Global North have experienced economic growth built on the same emissions that now affect vulnerable communities.
As climate impacts intensify, historical responsibility demands that wealthy countries not only reduce their own emissions but also finance adaptation and mitigation efforts in the Global South. Instead, they are increasingly turning to carbon credits and offset schemes to meet climate targets, while their economies remain dependent on high greenhouse gas emissions. Such carbon markets allow countries, companies, and organizations to buy and sell “carbon credits” to compensate for their emissions rather than actually reducing them.
Norway, as one of the world’s richest countries and a major exporter of oil and gas, has both the capacity and the responsibility to help accelerate global decarbonization. However, its continued use of carbon credits raises fundamental questions about justice, responsibility, and which interests are prioritized in global climate policy.
Malawi is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, despite contributing very little to global emissions. In recent years, unpredictable weather patterns have destroyed agriculture, disrupted education, displaced people, and placed additional strain on an already fragile healthcare system. Since 2015, the country has experienced a series of consecutive climate-related shocks that have made the situation increasingly precarious. After each crisis, a cycle of humanitarian response follows, only for new crises to emerge—hindering development and deepening poverty.
At the same time, these events highlight something more serious: climate change in countries like Malawi is not only a natural disaster—it is a political consequence of an unjust global system that allows emissions to accumulate in some parts of the world while others pay the price. Carbon credits are part of this system.
Although the consequences of carbon credits have not been thoroughly studied in Malawi, evidence from other countries provides important lessons.
A well-documented example of how carbon markets can reinforce inequality comes from Uganda. A 2019 report by the Oakland Institute showed how Norway, Sweden, and Finland contributed to large-scale land acquisitions for carbon offset projects through the forestry company Green Resources, largely owned by Norway’s development finance institution Norfund. To establish certified “sustainable” pine plantations, thousands of Ugandan farmers were displaced from their ancestral lands. These plantations generated carbon credits that Norway could count toward its own climate targets. Meanwhile, the communities bearing the costs lost access to land and experienced declining food security and social instability.
Another Oakland Institute report highlights the darker side of carbon markets through the concept of “carbon violence,” describing the structural, social, political, economic, and cultural harms associated with their development.
Similar challenges have been documented in Kenya. Investigations by Survival International show that carbon offset schemes in northern Kenya have contributed to land grabbing and human rights violations. Their Blood Carbon campaign demonstrated how so-called “nature-based solutions” often reproduce fortress conservation practices, in which Indigenous and pastoralist communities are historically excluded from their traditional lands, while carbon credits generate profits for Western companies and organizations.
These concerns were confirmed by a landmark Kenyan court ruling in 2025, which found that several conservancies under the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) had been established illegally on unregistered communal land without community consent. The court also ordered the withdrawal of NRT’s armed rangers. These conservancies sold carbon credits to multinational companies, including Meta, Netflix, and British Airways.
These examples illustrate several key challenges:
Superficial solutions: Plantations create an appearance of climate action without addressing continued fossil fuel extraction.
Human rights impacts: Communities lose access to land essential for their livelihoods, while benefits largely accrue to actors in the Global North.
Exclusion of local voices: Affected groups are often neither meaningfully consulted nor adequately compensated.
These cases show what happens when climate solutions prioritize carbon accounting over human rights and justice. At the same time, as countries like Malawi explore opportunities in what are often presented as “lucrative” carbon markets through the recently adopted Malawi Carbon Markets Framework, it is essential that lessons from countries such as Kenya and Uganda are taken into account.
Carbon credits and offset schemes are often presented as efficient, market-friendly solutions. However, they are based on assumptions that conceal deeper structural problems.
1. They shift responsibility instead of reducing emissions.
Offset schemes allow wealthy countries to meet climate targets on paper while delaying the difficult but necessary transformation of their own economies.
2. They reproduce colonial patterns of resource extraction.
African countries become resources for meeting external climate targets, reflecting historical inequalities in ownership, decision-making power, and distribution of benefits.
3. They marginalize local communities.
As seen in Uganda, decisions are often made without genuine participation from those most affected.
4. They distract from real solutions.
Offset schemes divert political will and funding away from green transitions, energy system reform, and the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels globally.
It is clear that carbon credits do not reduce emissions but instead divert attention from real climate action. Countries like Norway have both the capacity and resources to pursue a more just and transformative approach. By promoting a fairer global financial architecture and increasing direct climate finance, local communities can be empowered to develop climate solutions that actually work for them.
Meeting climate targets should not depend on the use of agricultural land elsewhere in the world. Norway must prioritize domestic emissions reductions, including phasing out fossil fuel extraction and supporting just transition processes.
Carbon credits can offset emissions, but they cannot offset responsibility. The climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms—it requires radical systemic change that rejects false solutions and places justice before convenience.
For countries like Malawi, climate action is essential for sustainable development. Only when countries like Norway engage with the Global South in genuine solidarity and justice can we build a climate future that restores dignity, redistributes power, and delivers action based on shared responsibility.
