Ecuador has legalised carbon markets. President Daniel Noboa has signed into law high-level reforms that clarify the country’s stance on carbon trading and establish a national registry, Carbon Pulse reported on September 7, closing a constitutional ambiguity that kept one of the most carbon-rich countries in South America out of the market for nearly two decades. For buyers, developers and investors, a supply jurisdiction with Amazonian scale has moved from approved-on-paper to enacted, and the questions that matter now are about implementation speed, Article 6 readiness and project-level consent.
What the Reform Establishes
The signed reforms do two things at once. First, they remove the legal doubt that has hung over carbon market activity in Ecuador since 2008, effectively legalising both voluntary and compliance market participation. Second, they create the institutional backbone: a national carbon credit registry, the piece of infrastructure without which credits cannot be issued, tracked, authorized or transferred with any credibility.
The framework that lawmakers assembled across this year’s votes goes further than a simple legalisation. As reported when the legislation cleared the National Assembly, it provides for an Ecuadorian Carbon Exchange, known as BECX, and covers credit categories spanning REDD+, renewable energy, afforestation and blue carbon. UK-based ratings agency BeZero Carbon has been named the official ratings provider for the exchange, an unusual choice that signals Quito wants Ecuadorian credits benchmarked against international quality standards from the first issuance rather than retrofitted later.
The legal anchor lands on top of technical work already under way. A technical standard for the authorization and registration of carbon projects entered into force in June, and Quito has been openly positioning the country to trade internationally transferred mitigation outcomes under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. The new law gives that machinery a statutory home.
An 18-Year Exile, Closed in Three Acts
The backstory explains why this signature took so long. Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, written under former President Rafael Correa, embedded a rights-of-nature doctrine that was widely read as incompatible with market-based environmental instruments. While Colombia, Peru and Chile spent the following decade and a half building carbon pricing and trading ecosystems, Ecuador sat out the market despite holding some of the region’s largest forest carbon reserves.
The unblocking came in three acts. In February 2026, the National Assembly voted 117 to 20 to legalise carbon markets, a majority large enough to signal the constitutional reading had shifted. Noboa, who had vetoed similar legislation in 2024, did not sign that version. In August, the Assembly passed the reforms a second time, folded into broader climate legislation, and sent them back to the presidential desk. This month, the signature landed.
The resource base behind the legislation is not in dispute. Roughly 47% of Ecuador’s territory lies in the Amazon basin, and the country adds the Galapagos marine reserve and extensive coastal mangroves to its blue carbon potential. The World Bank has estimated Ecuador’s annual climate financing needs at $3.7 billion through 2050, against current public climate spending of around $500 million. Carbon market proponents put that gap at the centre of their case, and the government has now accepted the argument.
What Changes for Buyers, Developers and Investors
For buyers, Ecuador immediately becomes a jurisdiction to underwrite rather than to watch. A national registry plus an exchange with a mandatory ratings layer is a transparency wrapper that most emerging supply countries cannot offer. If the BECX launches as designed, Ecuadorian credits would arrive with third-party quality assessments attached at the point of listing, which shortens due diligence and could compress the discount buyers typically apply to new-market supply.
For developers, the opening is real but sequenced. The law establishes the right to operate; it does not itself authorize a single project. The June technical standard and the forthcoming implementing rules will determine how authorization, benefit sharing and credit categories work in practice, and free, prior and informed consent processes with indigenous organisations will set the real timeline for any Amazon REDD+ development. Indigenous groups have historically been sceptical of forest carbon schemes in Ecuador, and that scepticism does not disappear with a signature.
For investors, the significance is regional. Ecuador was the last major Amazonian holdout without a legal carbon market framework. Its entry completes a South American map in which every large forest jurisdiction now has, or is building, statutory carbon market infrastructure, and it adds another government to the group treating Article 6 authorization capacity as economic policy rather than technical housekeeping.
What to Watch Next
Three checkpoints separate enactment from a functioning market. First, the implementing regulations: the speed and content of the secondary rules will determine whether the registry and exchange launch in months or drift. Second, the operational launch of the national registry and BECX, including whether BeZero’s ratings mandate survives the rule-writing process intact. Third, the first projects to seek authorization under the new framework, and how the government handles consent and benefit sharing when theory meets specific territories.
Ecuador tried to legislate carbon markets in 2024 and failed at the presidential desk. In 2026 the Assembly delivered the bill twice, and this time the president signed. The legal exile is over; the implementation clock has started.
