Guyana has become the first country in history to receive the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA ) eligible credits for airlines.

The move will allow airlines to buy carbon credits voluntarily.

Under the 2016 CORSIA deal approved by the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) assembly, carriers from more than 100 participating countries would have to offset rising emissions above the baseline of 85% of 2019 levels.

The announcement was made in an Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) Guyana which also noted that ART issued that 7.14 million 2021 vintage carbon credits to Guyana as the Government simultaneously announced the world’s first Paris Agreement corresponding adjustment, which was authorized and reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

The release stated that the process fulfills requirements to label the credits as the world’s first that are eligible for use by airlines toward their targets in the 2024-2026 phase of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) global emission reduction program, CORSIA. 

“While several countries have announced their intention to trade internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) pursuant to Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, Guyana has authorized the international transfer of emission reduction credits and is the first to report a corresponding adjustment to the UNFCCC. This is the official UN process to prevent double counting, which describes situations where a single greenhouse gas emission reduction or removal credit is used more than once to demonstrate compliance with international mitigation targets, such as Paris Agreement NDC or airlines’ obligations under CORSIA,” the release stated.

As a result of the authorization and reporting to the UNFCCC, Guyana’s TREES (Tropical Forests for Climate, Resilience, and Environmental Sustainability) credits are eligible for use by airlines to meet their compliance requirements in the first phase of CORSIA, which began on 1 January 2024. 

126 countries are voluntarily participating in CORSIA’s first phase, covering roughly 80% of annual emissions from the aviation sector.

 All participating airline operators with annual emissions over 10,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions must monitor and report their emissions, and then purchase carbon credits to offset any remaining emissions that exceed a percentage of their 2019 baseline emissions.

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