Kazakhstan has approved a detailed operating manual for cooperative carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, giving investors defined procedures for project applications, credit authorisations, and issuance timelines.
The government adopted the implementing regulation, an order under the Environmental Code, at a recent launch event in Astana. The order is secondary legislation that operationalises amendments to the code signed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in July 2026, and carries the formal name “Rules of state regulation in the field of greenhouse gas emissions and absorption”.
Related documents from the launch confirm priority areas across the economy, including the dominant oil and gas sector. The framework's “Project Priority Areas” cover carbon capture and storage, drawing in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air capture; industrial decarbonisation, spanning hydrogen-based metallurgy, green ammonia, and industrial heat pumps; methane in extractive industries; waste, including landfill gas capture and biogas; transport, including road freight and passenger electrification; and agriculture and forestry, covering biochar, pasture restoration, soil organic carbon, and reforestation and afforestation.
The order also introduces a parallel pathway for converting existing voluntary carbon projects, particularly nature-based projects, into Article 6 and international credits.
The document sets a national carbon budget in five-year periods, with the 2026–2030 budget requiring annual reductions of 1.5% below the previous year. It also updates the country's emissions trading system, which launched in 2013 and returned in 2018 after a suspension in 2016 and 2017. Installations enter and exit the system at a threshold of 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, with a lighter “administered installations” tier for smaller emitters between 10,000 and 20,000 tonnes.
The rules correspond directly to amendments to the 2021 Environmental Code, and give developers a defined route from project design through to tradeable international credits.