While the slow pace of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change (UNFCCC) talks and the weak global economy have delayed political and funding commitments, increasing climate variability and its devastating impact march onward. The current drought in Eastern Africa and the conse-quent threat of famine could be fright-ening signs of things to come. Agricul-ture and finance ministers throughout the continent are understandably eager to secure new sources of funding to help them address food security and build resilience to climate change. The World Bank, carbon emissions traders, and rich country governments are taking advantage of this desperate situation to push carbon markets as the primary vehicle to finance mitigation of greenhouse gases and adaptation to climate change. Last November, the World Bank and the Kenyan govern-ment announced a new pilot project to develop an offset market for soil carbon sequestration. The World Bank, through its BioCarbon Fund,2 is showcasing the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project as an “early action ” to demonstrate a “triple win ” for mitigation, adaptation and food security for small-scale producers, while delivering carbon finance through the sale of credits in the carbon market. It claims that, “The Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project is not only the first project that sells soil carbon credits in Africa, it is also paving the way for a new approach to carbon accounting methodologies.”3 While the project will support improve-ments in agricultural practices that could benefit local farmers, the carbon market approach is a very shaky founda-tion for climate finance. Nearly half of the monetary benefits from the proposed offset credits would be absorbed by project developers as “transaction costs,” with miniscule returns to the farmers who would be implementing the project. While carbon markets are promoted as a way to “leverage ” climate funding, to judge by this project, the rules being developed risk oversimplifying evolvin