Carbon offsetting has a growing presence on the global climate action agenda where it is promoted as a triple-win for the environment, business and development. However, the opinions on carbon offsetting are divided. Projects with agroforestry and participatory methods are highlighted as having more positive aspects, but critics emphasize that carbon offsetting can become an excuse for the Global North to continue business as usual while using the Global South as a carbon dump. Carbon offsetting can reproduce unequal power structures where countries, while formally decolonized, are still affected by coloniality. This study examines carbon offsetting through tree planting projects and the potential discrepancies between discourse and documented effects in East Africa with focus on Uganda. Four projects are compared with each other, focusing on documented social effects and impacts on land access. We analyze how power structures are expressed in carbon offsetting generally and in the projects. This is a literature study with a combined theoretical framework of political ecology and the decolonial approach. Findings imply that there, to varying degrees, are discrepancies between rhetoric and reality for the projects. Differences between the projects’ outcomes mainly boil down to their planting method, degree of participation and operating logic. All the projects are to varying degrees based on a coloniality, permeated by power structures and have some level of exclusion. However, findings also imply that best practices involve the local communities in a bottom up approach with an agroforestry method and carbon offsetting as a co-benefit.