Carbon offsets have been criticized for failing to provide carbon savings and ignoring the needs of local communities. But in Tanzania, hunt
Deep in the Rift Valley of East Africa, close to some of the most ancient human remains ever unearthed, one of the continent’s last hunter-gatherer tribes is embracing 21st -century environmentalism. The Hadza people, often called “the last archers of Africa,” are selling carbon credits generated from conserving their forests and using the revenues to employ their youths as scouts to keep forest destroyers away.
Starting this March, some 1,300 Hadza and members of the cattle-herding tribes with whom they share the Yaeda Valley of northern Tanzania, began receiving the first payments of what will be nearly half a million dollars annually from a local social enterprise, Carbon Tanzania, for protecting woodland hunting and grazing grounds across an area larger than New York City.