CORSIA, Sovereign Forests and the Traders Between Them

At a Glance: Where Things Stand

The agreement that the Republic of Gabon signed with SEFE on 3 November 2026, for about 6 Mt of HFLD forest credits under ART TREES, repeats the route that the Government of Guyana opened through Mercuria and the IATA procurement events, and the authorised and CORSIA-eligible stock recorded in Market Watch at 19 October 2026 already lay 92.3% in jurisdictional forestry and cookstoves, so that Gabon adds supply at the margin while deepening the concentration of what airlines can buy.

Every CORSIA cancellation is recorded publicly against the airline that made it, and Guyana’s 2023 vintage, over-credited by about 40% through an error that passed verification, has shown that integrity can be questioned after the event, so that the compliance obligation stands once discharged while the reputational exposure remains with the airline by name, and prices are separating within categories, by project, vintage, adjustment and delivery terms, rather than between them.

An airline should therefore complete diligence on each tranche before purchase, covering the scope of the letter of authorisation, the adjustment or insurance behind it, the crediting level and verification record, ratings and adverse news, delivery terms and the claim each tranche will serve, since buying at a procurement event or from a trading house settles eligibility and price without settling integrity.

The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) issued its first TREES credits to the Government of Guyana in December 2022, covering about 33 million tonnes for the years 2016 to 2020, and Hess Corporation agreed shortly afterwards to purchase 37.5 million of those credits for at least US$750 million over fifteen years.¹ The Government of Guyana then authorised its 2021 vintage under Article 6, ART issued 7.14 million of those credits on 28 February 2024, and the reporting of the first corresponding adjustment for TREES credits to the UNFCCC allowed the ART Registry to label them CORSIA-eligible, being the first units anywhere to qualify for the first phase.²

The Government of Guyana nominated Mercuria as the exclusive seller of those units into the procurement events that IATA organised with Xpansiv on the Aviation Carbon Exchange, and the first event, open to airlines alone from 28 October to 29 November 2024, drew 32 airlines, of which 11 bought at a fixed price of US$21.70 a tonne, while Mercuria offered forward and multi-year purchases alongside it.^3,4 Later events in 2025 cleared at about US$22.25 and US$22.55 a tonne, the Government of Guyana reported in June 2026 that it had earned US$353 million from credit sales since 2022, and the ICAO CORSIA Supply Project recorded 24,963,214 authorised Guyanese units as at 2 June 2026.^5,6,7

On 3 November 2026 in London the Republic of Gabon, represented by the Agence Gabonaise pour le Développement de l’Economie Verte (AGADEV), signed agreements with SEFE Marketing & Trading for about 6 million tonnes of jurisdictional forest credits certified under ART TREES and announced as CORSIA-eligible, with first deliveries expected no later than the first quarter of 2027.^8,9 The credits are credited under the High Forest, Low Deforestation (HFLD) approach, so that they rest on Gabon maintaining standing forest across a territory that SEFE describes as retaining more than 80% forest cover, the price has not been disclosed, and the proceeds are reported to be held in a dedicated account until national rules on sharing them come into force.^8,10,11

A registry aggregator drawing on ART records as at 1 June 2026 listed Gabon’s TREES programme as not yet issued, and the Market Watch authorisation register recorded no authorised Gabonese tonne at 19 October 2026, so that the volume becomes usable by an airline only once ART has issued it, the Government of Gabon has authorised it for CORSIA and the registry has labelled it, a sequence that a first delivery in the first quarter of 2027 would complete about a year before the Phase 1 cancellation deadline of 31 January 2028.^12,13,14

Table 1 · The two sovereign forest routes into CORSIA. Sources: Government of Guyana; IATA; ICAO CORSIA Supply Project, June 2026; SEFE; AGADEV.

Between the Guyana sales and the Gabon agreement the intermediary function widened from a single nominated seller to several types of participant, each taking a different position on authorisation and delivery risk. SEFE states that it supplies airlines on a spot and forward basis and, differently to a broker, has invested directly in forward streams of credits from developers, Shell retired 180,000 Gold Standard credits on behalf of Japan Airlines in March 2026, Econetix sells directly from four host letters of authorisation covering 14.5 million tonnes, and five insurance policies approved by Gold Standard now cover the risk that an authorisation is withdrawn or an adjustment not applied.^15,16,17,18

IATA reported in August 2026 that 42 letters of authorisation covered 72 million units, so that the volume a trader can contract forward has grown during 2026 faster than the volume issued and labelled, and by the time a tonne reaches an airline it has passed through a host government, a standard and usually a trader, which brings the question to what kind of tonne this route delivers.¹⁸

Climate Decode Market Watch, which follows 13 registries, recorded 43.9 Mt at 19 October 2026 that was both authorised under Article 6 and labelled for Phase 1, being the whole stock an airline could buy at that date, held across 11 host countries, 73 projects and 3 registries.¹³ Jurisdictional forestry and cookstoves account for 92.3% of it, Guyana’s programme alone for 56.7%, gas leak detection and repair in Uzbekistan for 2.5 Mt and clean water for the remainder, so that an airline wishing to avoid HFLD forestry in Phase 1 has a smaller and equally contested pool to turn to, cookstove credits carrying their own questions over the non-renewable biomass fraction and usage rates.¹³

Authorised and CORSIA-eligible stock, 19 October 2026, Mt

By activity type

Jurisdictional REDD+

Guyana, ART

24.9 Mt

Cookstoves

Verra, Gold Standard

15.6 Mt

Gas leak repair

Uzbekistan, Verra

2.5 Mt

Clean water

Verra

0.9 Mt

By host country (0.25 Mt and above)

Guyana

ART

24.9 Mt

Rwanda

Gold Standard, Verra

7.8 Mt

Cambodia

Verra

3.6 Mt

Uzbekistan

Verra

2.5 Mt

Madagascar

Verra

2.2 Mt

Malawi

Gold Standard

1.3 Mt

Lao PDR

Verra

1.1 Mt

Tanzania

Verra

0.3 Mt

Total 43.9 Mt across 11 hosts, 73 projects and 3 registries. Gabon’s agreed volume of about 6 Mt was not yet issued or authorised at this date.

Figure 1 · Authorised and CORSIA Phase 1-eligible stock by activity type and by host country, 19 October 2026. Source: Climate Decode Market Watch, registry data to 19 October 2026.¹³

Prices have begun to separate within these categories rather than between them, the market indications recorded in Market Watch having placed a credit whose project is named an average of US$3.75 above a credit chosen by the seller across 26 assessment dates between March and July 2026, while 26.21 Mt of the 51.1 Mt authorised pool carried no applied corresponding adjustment at that date.¹³ Since published Phase 1 demand estimates run from 100 to 150 million units in the ICAO range to 170 to 236 million in IATA’s June 2026 estimate, sellers rather than buyers hold the stronger position on terms, and the choice that remains to an airline before 2028 is a choice of tranche rather than of category.^7,16

Table 2 · Market Watch indicators set against the buyer’s choice. Source: Climate Decode Market Watch, registry data to 19 October 2026; market indications are spreads, not forecasts.¹³

Buying CORSIA units before January 2028? Climate Decode reviews the authorisation, adjustment, crediting level and contract terms behind each tranche before you commit.

The ART Registry designates publicly the credits cancelled for CORSIA and the compliance period against which each was cancelled, Gold Standard and ACR publish open retirement records, and each operator reports its cancellations to its state on the emissions unit cancellation report that the state transmits to ICAO, so that the project, vintage and serial range behind an airline’s compliance can be identified by any rating agency, researcher or journalist, Verra’s gated retirement records being the only partial exception.^3,13,19

The open registry record, as compiled in Market Watch to 31 July 2026, held 401,792 confirmed tonnes cancelled against the obligation by 5 operators, each cancellation tied to a named airline, programme and vintage, while 502,000 CORSIA credits were retired across the market in the first half of 2026 against 14,000 in the whole of 2025.^13,20

CORSIA cancellations on the open registry record, by operator

Operator	State	Tonnes	Registry and source	Date
Japan Airlines	Japan	180,100	Gold Standard, via Shell	March 2026
Japan Airlines	Japan	35,000	ART, Guyana ART102	21 April 2026
Japan Airlines	Japan	35,000	ART, Guyana ART102	20 March 2026
Japan Airlines	Japan	100	ART, Guyana ART102	13 May 2025
ANA	Japan	1,000	ART, Guyana ART102	28 February 2025
Singapore Airlines and Scoot	Singapore	150,000	Verra	14 April 2026
Singapore Airlines and Scoot	Singapore	Undisclosed	Verra	June or July 2026
Thai Airways	Thailand	Undisclosed	Verra	29 June 2026
Skyservice Business Aviation	Canada	592	Gold Standard, Tanzania	12 February 2026

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Figure 2 · Confirmed CORSIA cancellations on the open registry record by operator, state, registry and date, as compiled to 31 July 2026. Source: Climate Decode Market Watch cancellation record; registry retirement records.¹³

The rating agency BeZero assigned a D rating to Guyana’s 2023 TREES credits on 13 October 2026 after identifying a spreadsheet cell that referred to the wrong baseline year, an error that overstated the 2023 issuance by about 40%, or some 3.9 million credits, against a gross issuance of 9,621,384, and that had passed the verification preceding issuance in December 2025.^21,22 The Government of Guyana has moved untransacted 2023 credits into an ART Registry Administrator account so that the over-issuance can be cancelled from them and has said that no transacted credits are affected, BeZero expects the vintage to revert to the BB grade of Guyana’s other vintages once the correction is explained, and neither ART nor the Government of Guyana has yet set out how the corresponding adjustments already reported would be treated.^21,22

An obligation once discharged is not reopened by later criticism of the unit, since the Technical Advisory Body to ICAO declined to make operators liable for replacing units purchased and cancelled in good faith, and the 2023 correction is being made from credits that no airline holds.^22,23 The exposure that remains is reputational, attaching by name to every cancellation already recorded from a vintage or programme that is later downgraded or criticised, and since Guyana and Gabon are both HFLD programmes under the same standard, buyers of the Gabonese volume can be expected to ask for the crediting-level workbook and the verification record alongside the letter of authorisation, a scrutiny that sharpens further where the same tonnes are presented as voluntary action.

ART states that TREES credits may be sold to corporate buyers towards voluntary commitments as well as to airlines under CORSIA, and the VCMI Claims Code does not require a credit to be authorised or adjusted to support a claim, requiring instead that its authorisation status be disclosed, so that an authorised and adjusted unit supports a voluntary claim when it is purchased and cancelled for that purpose.^24,25 No rule examined for this article expressly addresses whether a single cancellation may serve both a CORSIA obligation and a voluntary claim, although the Code defines the voluntary market as covering credits not purchased to be surrendered into a regulated compliance market.²⁵

A customer offset programme in which a passenger pays to offset a flight, and the airline then cancels the same tonne against its own obligation, would place two claims on one reduction, and in the European Union it would also meet Directive (EU) 2024/825, which restricts claims that a product is climate-neutral on the basis of offsetting and applies from September 2026.²⁶ The overlap is avoided where the customer programme draws on a separate tranche cancelled in the customer’s name, which may itself consist of adjusted CORSIA-eligible units where quality is the selling point, or where the passenger’s payment is presented as a contribution to the airline’s compliance cost without an offset claim, and Japan Airlines has paired its CORSIA retirements with a separate removal agreement with Climeworks, signed in September 2026, so that its compliance and voluntary positions rest on different instruments.²⁷

In each case the allocation of every tranche to one claim has to be recorded before cancellation, which places the burden on the same diligence that protects the compliance position.

The IATA procurement events give airlines a transparent and auditable purchase at a fixed price, with payment through IATA clearing and a summary of the eligibility and environmental integrity of the units on offer, so that an airline buying there can rely on the units being CORSIA-eligible, authorised and correspondingly adjusted.^3,4 Eligibility is the test a regulator applies, whereas a rating agency, an investor or a customer asks whether the crediting level, the verification and the host’s authorisation will stand after the units have been cancelled under the airline’s name, and the Guyana 2023 error, which passed verification and was identified by a third party months after issuance, shows that the two tests can diverge on units sold through any channel.^21,22

The diligence that protects a public cancellation should accordingly be completed tranche by tranche before purchase, whether the units come through a procurement event, a trading house or a developer, and its elements are set out below with the support Climate Decode provides on each.

Table 3 · Pre-purchase diligence on a CORSIA tranche. Source: Climate Decode.

Climate Decode supports airlines, corporate buyers and host governments through the VCM, CORSIA and Article 6 Market Watch, which maintains the registers on which this article draws, through Canopy, which calculates CORSIA obligations, screens eligible units by authorisation and insurance and keeps an audit-ready record of each cancellation, and through its advisory work on procurement before the January 2028 deadline, so that a purchase made at an auction or from a trader is matched by a record of the diligence behind it.¹⁸

The CORSIA analysis that Climate Decode maintains under Market Watch has modelled the Phase 1 and Phase 2 outcomes under base, low and high cases, the detailed figures being available to subscribers, and it rests on a measured interval between a government’s first Article 6 instrument and its first letter of authorisation that has ranged from three to eight years.¹³ New Phase 1 supply therefore comes mainly from governments that have already begun the process or, as with Gabon, from sovereign programmes under a standard that can carry the CORSIA label once authorised, and in the near term increased supply is anticipated, easing pressure at the margin without changing the direction of the Phase 1 balance, while concentration in sovereign forestry and the separation of prices within categories are both expected to rise.

Table 4 · Directional indicators. Source: Climate Decode Market Watch.

Table 5 · Dates on which the position next changes. Sources: ICAO; SEFE; Carbon Pulse.

Climate Decode Platform

The figures in this article come from Climate Decode’s VCM, CORSIA and Article 6 Market Watch, which tracks eligible supply, authorisation, cancellations and price across registries.

Climate Decode · Advisory

CORSIA procurement before January 2028

Climate Decode reviews each tranche before purchase, from the letter of authorisation and its adjustment to the crediting level, ratings and delivery terms, and builds multi-year buying strategies for airlines.

Notes

Sources

Market Watch figures are registry data to 19 October 2026 and will change as authorisations, issuances and cancellations are recorded; modelled outcomes are available to Market Watch subscribers.