Indonesia issues its first forestry carbon credits under a new national registry

From framework to first transaction

On July 6, 2026, Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry issued formal trading approvals for four forestry carbon projects, releasing an initial pool of approximately 31.72 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, CO2e, onto the country's carbon market. Three days later, on July 9, the government launched the Sistem Registri Unit Karbon, SRUK, in Jakarta, the national registry meant to record, track, and retire every carbon unit traded in Indonesia going forward. Together the two events mark the moment Indonesia's carbon economic value program, built on Presidential Regulation No. 110 of 2025 and Forestry Ministerial Regulations No. 6 and No. 7 of 2026, moved from legal architecture to an actual, countable transaction.

Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni framed the shift in direct terms at the SRUK launch, calling the registry "a crucial instrument for realizing the potential of an inclusive green economy in Indonesia." Weeks earlier, previewing the same milestone, he had put it more plainly still: "Indonesia is no longer merely designing policies; it has advanced significantly to the stage of practical implementation on the ground."

Four projects, one new registry

The July 6 approvals covered three concession-scale Forest Utilization Business Permit, PBPH, holders and one community-based social forestry entity. The Sumatra Merang Peatland Project in South Sumatra, developed by PT Global Alam Lestari, and the Katingan Mentaya Project in Central Kalimantan, developed by PT Rimba Makmur Utama and already one of the most closely watched peatland restoration projects in Southeast Asia, both received approval. So did the Mayas Project in West Kalimantan, developed by PT Mohairson Pawan Khatulistiwa, and the Bujang Raba community forestry project in Jambi, a roughly 224,000-hectare social forestry scheme supported by Komunitas Konservasi Indonesia, known as KKI Warsi.

Deputy Minister of Forestry Rohmat Marzuki was careful to describe the mechanism's limits alongside its scope. The approvals, he said, "open the door to the voluntary carbon market. Therefore, the mechanism is voluntary." That distinction matters for how government and public institutions should read the moment: this is a permissioning step for four specific projects to sell credits, not a mandatory national carbon tax or a compliance scheme reaching across the economy.

SRUK itself is designed to prevent the problem that has dogged voluntary carbon markets worldwide, the same ton of carbon being counted, and sold, more than once. The system connects, by application programming interface and blockchain-based traceability, to the Verra Registry, the international standard used by three of the four approved projects, and to the Indonesia Carbon Exchange, IDXCarbon, at the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Minister Antoni, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan, Minister of Environment Jumhur Hidayat, Presidential Special Envoy for Climate and Energy Hashim Djojohadikusumo, and OJK Board of Commissioners chairwoman Friderica Widyasari Dewi all appeared at the July 9 launch, a lineup that signals the initiative sits across at least four ministries and the financial regulator rather than inside forestry policy alone.

The numbers behind the launch

The 31.72 million tons of CO2e released across the four projects carries a projected transaction value of roughly Rp 5 trillion, estimated by different government sources at between US$276 million and US$277.5 million depending on the exchange rate applied. Of that, the government projects around Rp 500 billion, close to US$27.7 million, will flow to the state as non-tax revenue, known as PNBP.

"Carbon trading is not only for the elite, not only for those who have long been well-off, but also for people at the grassroots level."

That line from Minister Antoni points to the two land categories the ministry has flagged for future participation beyond this first batch: 8.3 million hectares of social forestry area and 1.4 million hectares of customary, or adat, forest, both eligible for profit-sharing arrangements if their managing communities pursue carbon project status. The ministry has separately projected that full implementation of the carbon economic value instrument could draw around US$5.8 billion in green investment nationally, a figure that describes the program's ambition rather than anything guaranteed by this first issuance.

A governance question still unresolved

Not every voice inside government is celebrating the pace of the rollout. Eddy Soeparno, Deputy Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly, MPR, and a member of House of Representatives Commission XII, warned before the launch that Indonesia risks selling carbon credits internationally before it has finished accounting for its own emissions. "Every sector, including industry, energy, marine, agriculture, and others, must have clear data on its emissions and how much those emissions will be reduced," he said, arguing for a completed national carbon balance before trading expands further. His concern is technical but consequential: without that baseline, Indonesia cannot reliably tell which emission reductions are needed to meet its own climate commitments and which are genuinely surplus and safe to sell abroad.

That tension, between a government eager to demonstrate implementation and a legislature asking for the accounting to catch up first, is likely to shape how fast SRUK's project list grows beyond the initial four.

Sirkularium's view

For government and public institutions watching Indonesia's carbon market, this launch is best read as a pilot with real money attached rather than a finished system. The registry infrastructure, the API link to Verra, and the ministerial approvals for four well-documented projects are genuine progress, and Deputy Minister Marzuki's emphasis on the voluntary, permission-based nature of the mechanism sets a defensible starting point.

Three things merit close attention going forward. First, whether the national carbon balance that Deputy Speaker Soeparno is asking for gets built before the project list expands much beyond these four, since credibility in international carbon markets depends on Indonesia being able to show its own accounting, not only its individual project credentials. Second, whether the profit-sharing promised to the 8.3 million hectares of social forestry area and 1.4 million hectares of customary forest actually reaches forest farmer groups and Indigenous communities in the Bujang Raba model, rather than concentrating in the three concession-scale projects. Third, whether SRUK's double-counting safeguards hold up under scrutiny once trading volume grows past this initial, closely watched batch. Public institutions with a stake in land use, climate finance, or regional development should treat the next round of project approvals, not this first one, as the real test of whether Indonesia's carbon market can scale with integrity.