Keystone Programme

We work with local partners to alleviate extreme poverty, regenerate land and improve education

Our cooperative programme produces long-term, verifiable voluntary emission reductions that combine carbon sequestration with rural livelihood improvements through small-scale, farmer-led, forestry and agroforestry projects

The Objectives

  1. To reduce pressure on natural resources and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and watershed functions
  2. Diversify and increase incomes for poor, rural small-scale farmers through increased productivity
  3. Build effective community-based institutions aimed at addressing climate change, social cohesion and gender equity
  4. Reduce CO2 emissions by planting trees, implementing improved forest management systems and regenerating land
  5. Build the resilience and adaptive capacities of rural smallholders to climate change
  6. Reduce carbon associated with energy and resources
  7. Develop clean renewable energy

The Approach

The programme operates as a cooperative carbon offsetting scheme in which farmers and schools aggregate emissions reductions and removals to achieve marketable scale. In addition to retaining their land rights, the Payments for Ecosystem Services (“PES”) agreements recognise that farmers have rights to the trees and climate services (carbon rights)

​The studies we carry out use facilitative and non-prescriptive methods of analysis to enable communities to identify their challenges and find routes to address them

Our findings were captured in a report and supported by a film documentary in February 2019 with further site visits in July & August 2019 and January & February 2020.

Key Pillars

We recognise the relevant national and international development strategies
  • Kenya Vision 2030
  • Kenya Big Four Agenda
  • Indigenous Peoples Rights 
  • UN Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) & the Agenda 2030. 

One of their overarching themes is to ensure that Indigenous People’s voices, priorities and concerns are not only raised but also addressed

Challenges

Communities in Kenya, like other indigenous and ethnic minority groups elsewhere, have maintained their traditional farm-oriented lifestyles and continued to be on the fringe of the market economy and development

Global issues such as climate change & overpopulation coupled with diminishing land sizes and accessibility, declining land productivity, frequent droughts, escalating levels of poverty and food shortages, mean that communities can no longer support themselves from subsistence farming

It is now necessary to diversify their sources of livelihood in order to cope and mitigate the hardships and challenges that confront them.

Location

Pan-Kenya

Field images

Film documentary

Amboseli, Kenya