China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) and Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) issued notice 环办气候函〔2026〕384号, dated October 8, 2026 and posted October 10, 2026, revising the national voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction (CCER) methodology for mangrove planting projects from CCER-14-002-V01 to CCER-14-002-V02. The revised methodology takes effect on November 7, 2026, 30 days after issuance, under the Measures for the Administration of Greenhouse Gas Voluntary Emission Reduction Trading (Trial).
Project owners filing new mangrove CCER projects, owners of same-province coastal salt-marsh and seagrass restoration projects who bundle them with mangrove projects, and the validation and verification bodies that design or check those filings must apply CCER-14-002-V02 to every new mangrove filing from November 7, 2026, or a project not built to V02 cannot be registered under the revised methodology and provincial ecology and natural-resources authorities will inspect registered projects and certified reductions and pursue violations. Projects already registered under V01 continue to apply V01.
What does CCER-14-002-V02 change for mangrove projects?
The notice revises the mangrove planting methodology to standardise project design, implementation, validation and emission-reduction accounting across the national CCER registry, and it adds three operational rules. First, project owners must commit to the uniqueness of each project and to the truthfulness, completeness and validity of the materials they submit, while local ecology and natural-resources authorities are told to encourage eligible mangrove projects to enter the voluntary market. Second, the notice introduces a same-province bundling mechanism detailed below. Third, it strengthens in-process and ex-post supervision: provincial and prefectural-level ecology authorities, together with natural-resources authorities, supervise registered projects and certified reductions, handle public reports and investigate violations.
Who must apply the revised methodology, and by when?
New mangrove-creation filings submitted to the national CCER registry on or after November 7, 2026 must be designed, accounted and validated under CCER-14-002-V02. The obligation reaches three categories of actor by market exposure: project owners filing new mangrove projects; owners of coastal salt-marsh and seagrass restoration projects in the same province who bundle them with mangrove projects; and the validation and verification bodies that draft or check the project documents. Projects already registered under V01 before the effective date stay on V01 and need not migrate.
| Filing status | Methodology that applies |
|---|---|
| Registered under V01 before November 7, 2026 | V01 continues |
| New mangrove filing on or after November 7, 2026 | V02 required |
| Bundled mangrove, salt-marsh and seagrass in one province | V02, with separate accounting per project type |
How does the same-province bundling mechanism work?
The headline change for project economics is bundling. Multiple mangrove planting projects, coastal salt-marsh vegetation restoration projects and seagrass bed vegetation restoration projects located in the same province, autonomous region or municipality may be combined into a single CCER project for one registration application, which the notice frames as a way to lower project development costs.
Two conditions govern a bundled filing. The project owner must obtain authorisation from every project owner included in the bundle, and the emission reductions of the three project types, mangrove, salt-marsh and seagrass, must be accounted for separately rather than pooled. The crediting period of a bundled project ends when any one of its bundled project owners no longer holds the ownership or use rights to the sea area or land inside the project boundary, which means bundling rights and land tenure must be tracked for every member of the bundle, not only the lead mangrove project.
What happens to non-compliant new filings?
A new mangrove project that is not designed to V02 cannot be registered under the revised methodology once it takes effect on November 7, 2026, closing the registry to V01-style new filings from that date. Beyond registration, provincial and prefectural-level ecology authorities, together with natural-resources authorities, conduct supervision and inspection of registered projects and certified voluntary emission reductions, accept public reports within their territory, and investigate and punish violations. Continuous, per-jurisdiction monitoring of the MEE register surfaces a methodology revision like this the moment it posts, before the 30-day window to the effective date runs out.
Next, confirm whether any mangrove, salt-marsh or seagrass project in your portfolio is meant for a new filing after November 7, 2026, and if so, move its design, accounting and validation documents onto CCER-14-002-V02; for projects already registered under V01, keep the V01 baseline and track any future methodology revision; and brief the validation body and the provincial ecology counterpart on the bundling authorisation and separate-accounting requirements before the next registration window.
