Uprooted by Green Colonialism: The Impact of Western Projects on the Sengwer People's Land and Lives

"Our livelihoods, our way to preserve the environment sustainably using our customary knowledge, were being disrupted completely. In fact, when communities suffer, also their environment suffer at equal measures because now the custodians are being brutally affected. Allowing other people who don’t have a relationship with the forest to come and destroy the ancestral land of the people that have been living there for centuries-actually this is like a new colonialism, there is no difference with colonialists that came and dispossessed our lands [....] I was almost killed because of EU funding, KFS tried to shoot at me and I can't use now my right hand because of such policies, despite saying that they [European Union] have safeguard policies [...] as indigenous communities, we don't support those issues for carbon credits. In fact, those are just like direct or neocolonialism. European Union is just coming back again to take back what was left in Africa or the global south after most of the countries got independence. They are now just coming, through factors in terms of investment of carbon credits, because it's land grabs, human rights violations and very serious ones,” Kimaiyo emphasized.