Indigenous pastoralists in Kenya that include the Maasai, Samburu, Borana, Turkana, and Endorois and pan-African climate justice coalitions have made four reparation demands of the United Kingdom.
They have asked for
1. Direct climate loss and damage finance
They have demanded that high-emitting industrialized nations, including the United Kingdom, and fossil fuel corporations pay grant-based, non-debt financial compensation directly to pastorlist communities, bypassing state bureaucracies, to cover mass livestock deaths, ruined pastures, and recurring drought/flood disasters.
2. Ancestral land restitution and tenure security
Demands for the return of fertile dry-season grazing lands and water sources seized during British colonial rule and post-independence conservation evictions. The 1904 and 1911 Maasai Agreements seized land and water sources. In the 1970s the British evacuated the Endorois from Lake Borgoria in the name of conservation efforts.
3. Carbon market revenue restitution a.k.a. "Green Colonalism"
They have made demands for full financial transparency, back-payments, and community control over tens of millions of dollars generated by soil carbon credit projects on their rangelands. This is mostly a result of the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project which is on community owned ancestral lands of indigenous pastoral communities. They also are demanding a cancellation of unconsented wildlife conservancies.
4. Formal apologies and colonial redress
They are demanding official state apologies, historical truth -telling, and financial compensation from the United Kingdom government for colonial-era land dispossession, forced relocations and military violence.
Activists for the Kenyon pastoralists rely mostly on domestic courts, international carbon-arket certifiers and UN climate summits and appeal to these audiences.
The status of these disputes is a mix of ongoing court battles over carbon markets and land rights, active legislative reforms, and disagreements over government budget allocations.