Permenhut 6/2026: Forestry Carbon Trading and Community Participation

Updated 2026-11-02 · 4 min read · By the akar.earth specialist team

Permenhut 6/2026 sets Indonesia's forestry carbon trading procedure and names social forestry and customary forests as equal participants. Key points.

Permenhut 6/2026 is the Ministry of Forestry regulation on procedures for carbon trading in Indonesia’s forestry sector. Socialised on 29 April 2026 (press release SP.134/HKLN/04/2026), it sets an end-to-end route from mitigation activity to trading, with time limits at each stage, and it names social forestry, customary forests and communities as legitimate, equal participants: “carbon for the people”.

What Permenhut 6/2026 is

The regulation is the forestry-sector procedure under Perpres 110/2025. It was issued by the Ministry of Forestry (Kemenhut), which became a separate ministry when the former Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) was split in 2024. It takes over the role that Permen LHK 7/2023 played under the previous framework.

Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni described its main breakthrough as an end-to-end flow:

1. Implementation of the mitigation activity.
2. Measurement and calculation of carbon units.
3. Validation and verification.
4. Recording in the national system.
5. Carbon trading.

Each stage is said to carry a definite time limit, which is meant to give business actors and community forest managers certainty about how long approvals take. The socialisation covered carbon trading in social forestry areas, conservation areas and production forest utilisation.

Who it applies to

Permenhut 6/2026 applies to forestry-sector mitigation actions whose results are to be traded. That includes:

• Forest utilisation licence holders (PBPH) in production forest.
• Social forestry groups holding permits under perhutanan sosial schemes. See carbon projects in social forestry.
• Customary law communities with recognised customary forests (hutan adat). See carbon rights in customary forests.
• Conservation area carbon activities, which the socialisation also addressed.
• Partners and developers who work with these groups, and the buyers of the resulting units.

What it requires and changes

From public statements and secondary reporting, the main features are:

We do not list article numbers, fees, benefit-sharing percentages or exact time limits. Our research did not find a reliable copy of the full text, and these details matter too much to guess. Read the official text from the Ministry of Forestry legal database (JDIH).

What it means for forest carbon developers

Community-based projects get a clearer route. Before 2026, social forestry groups faced uncertainty about whether and how they could sell carbon. The new rule says they can, and it treats them as actors, not only beneficiaries. That fits well with standards that already centre communities, such as Plan Vivo.

Partners are accountable. If you work with communities, expect to be a registered partner and to carry obligations on quality and social protection. Your consent records, grievance handling and benefit-sharing design will be read closely. Our guide to farmer registration and consent covers the documentation side.

Measurement must hold up in two systems. The flow runs through measurement, validation and verification before national recording. If you also certify internationally, use one dataset for both. Field plots with surveyed coordinates, tied to consistent remote-sensing layers, cut rework. Our field data campaigns are designed around this.

Plan for the transition. Projects started before SRUK was fully operational may need to move records from the ministry system into SRUK. Budget time for it.

What it means for buyers

Buyers gain a domestic legal basis for community forest carbon, which reduces one source of risk. The principles named for international access (additionality, benefit-sharing, FPIC) also match what buyers already check. Ask any seller for the project’s registry record, the partner’s registration and evidence of consent. If you need the unit for an international claim, also confirm authorisation and any corresponding adjustment.

Open questions

• Full text and article detail. Practitioners, including a Carbon Policy Lab practitioner brief planned after a May 2026 forum, are still feeding into implementing guidance.
• Partner registration criteria. Who qualifies as a registered partner, and how registration works, should be checked with the ministry.
• Benefit-sharing terms. Whether the regulation sets fixed shares or leaves them to agreements is not confirmed in public sources we reviewed.
• Interaction with OJK rules. How forestry-sector requirements interact with exchange rules under POJK 10/2026 was not covered in the sources.

Start from the Indonesia regulation hub for the wider framework, or use our regulatory navigation service to map a specific tenure against Permenhut 6/2026.