Indonesia has opened its forestry carbon market to international investors under a new ministerial regulation designed to simplify trading procedures and expand the supply of high-integrity carbon credits, weeks before its full-scale national market is due to begin operating. That is according to Edo Mahendra, senior advisor to Indonesia’s forestry minister, who said Forestry Ministerial Regulation No. 6 of 2026 opens a new chapter in the carbon market era.
The regulation, enacted by the Ministry of Forestry in April, sets out clearer and simpler business processes for forestry carbon trading whilst answering rising global demand for credits with stronger environmental integrity. Mahendra said the framework was built to hold that integrity in place as the market widens, with Jakarta opening broader access to carbon investment schemes.
Among the central changes is a ‘nesting’ mechanism intended to prevent the double counting of carbon credits, a long-standing weakness that has eroded buyer confidence in tropical forest offsets. The system is meant to tighten coordination between individual projects and national carbon accounting, so a tonne of emissions reductions is counted only once.
The reform also widens who is allowed to trade, with Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni saying it moves carbon trading beyond corporations to take in social forestry groups, indigenous communities, private forest owners and environmental service providers. This regulation expands participation in carbon trading, Antoni said, describing the change as a step towards a more credible and inclusive market.
Under the new rules, holders of forestry business and carbon environmental services licences keep exclusive, non-transferable control of their carbon trading rights, with operating partners and investors required to secure their interest through formal cooperation agreements. The regulation also sets up a three-stage community grievance process that runs from the receipt of a complaint through to its resolution.
Antoni has told a forestry investment forum in New York that the regulation gives businesses legal certainty to generate, verify and trade credits across natural production and industrial plantation forests as well as social forestry areas. He said it also tightens Indonesia’s alignment with the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and with the trading mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
Wood Central understands the licensing structure and oversight built into the rules are meant to make Indonesian forestry credits more bankable for international buyers, many of whom have grown cautious about rainforest offsets after years of scrutiny over their environmental integrity. The Ministry of Forestry has described the regulation as a shift from fragmented project activity towards a governed national market.
The forestry rules sit within a wider push to bring Indonesia’s national carbon market fully online, with the government targeting full operation by late June and large-scale transactions from July. Hashim Djojohadikusumo, President Prabowo Subianto’s special envoy for climate and energy, said the underlying Presidential Regulation No. 110 of 2025 is a game changer for the country.
Mahendra said Indonesia intends to stand at the front of the global carbon market rather than follow it, with the Ministry of Forestry valuing the country’s tradable carbon credits at 13.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050, worth between US$2.34 billion and US$7.2 billion depending on the global carbon price.
