Carbon Markets – Organic Reform Law to the Organic Environmental Code
On September 2, 2026, the Organic Reform Law to the Organic Environmental Code was published in the Fifth Supplement to Official Registry No. 360. This law expressly legalized and regulated Ecuador’s participation in carbon markets.
Below is a brief summary of the most relevant provisions:
- The Interinstitutional Climate Change Committee was created as the authority responsible for coordinating, articulating, and evaluating national public policy on this matter. The Committee is chaired by the National Environmental Authority with a casting vote and is composed of intersectoral State portfolios, delegates from decentralized autonomous governments, and invitees from the social, private, and academic sectors.
- Express participation is permitted by the State (through the National Environmental Authority and in coordination with competent entities) and by public, private, community, or mixed actors in regulated carbon markets (including cooperative approaches under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and other compliance schemes), voluntary markets (offsetting initiatives, value-chain mitigation, sectoral, jurisdictional, or territorial programs), and non-market approaches, as well as other modalities of climate cooperation aimed at mitigation, adaptation, addressing loss and damage, and mobilizing climate finance.
- The National Climate Change Registry was created as the official system under the National Environmental Authority (currently the Ministry of Environment and Energy – MAE) to document, track, register, and manage activities, instruments, programs, mitigation results (reductions, avoidances, removals, or captures of GHGs), climate units or instruments, and transactions associated with market mechanisms, cooperative approaches, and non-market approaches. It includes a climate and carbon transactions module and will be interoperable with national and international systems.
- The provisions of Article 74 of the Constitution (which establishes that environmental services shall not be subject to appropriation) are clarified. The reform specifies that mitigation results, climate units, or instruments (carbon credits or units) constitute quantifiable and verifiable effects subject to public regulation and do not imply the appropriation, privatization, commodification, or transfer of environmental services as such, nor of the carbon contained in ecosystems, nor of ecosystem functions. The constitutional regime of non-appropriation of environmental services remains intact.
- The National Environmental Authority must issue the secondary regulations governing the organization, operation, administration, interoperability, and procedures of the National Climate Change Registry by the end of August 2027.
This reform eliminates the historical ambiguity that limited the development of carbon projects in the country and opens new climate finance opportunities based on the generation, authorization, registration, transfer, use, retirement, or cancellation of mitigation results and carbon units (in both regulated and voluntary markets), without affecting the constitutional regime governing environmental services.
Do you have questions about how the new carbon markets regulations may affect your projects or investments?
Write to us. At LASPINA LEGAL we are ready to guide you and help you make the most of these new opportunities.