Building a Nation's Carbon Treasury: How TRST01 Is Helping the Democratic Republic of Congo Build Lumière

The Challenge

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The Democratic Republic of Congo's forests span approximately 155 million hectares and are estimated to store around 30 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, one of the most significant intact carbon sinks on the planet. At COP30, the DRC committed to governing this carbon wealth through transparent, sovereign, technology-driven systems, rather than leaving it to be negotiated project by project on external registries.

Before Lumière, MEDDNEC had already begun taking the concrete steps that compliance with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement demands. The Ministry issued the country's first Letters of Authorisation directly, including to clean-cooking developer Burn and Austrian developer Econetix for cookstove projects, enabling their credits for use under Article 6 and CORSIA, the international aviation sector's offsetting scheme. That intent to govern carbon activity correctly, rather than treat it as an afterthought, is what led the Ministry to commission a sovereign national registry. Without one, the country had no consolidated way to bring these and future projects under a single system, no shared registry linking government oversight, project developers, verification bodies and buyers, and no legal basis defining which government body held authority to issue, authorise or transfer credits at scale.

Why a sovereign system was needed:

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• Scale of monitoring: tracking deforestation, degradation and carbon stock change across DRC's forest area requires a satellite, AI and field-verification system operating at national scale, not project by project.
• Multiple entry points: government-originated and privately-originated projects, existing and new, all needed a common intake structure rather than separate, incompatible processes.
• Fragmented issuance risks fragmented trust: resolving credit issuance and Article 6 compliance deal by deal left no single, defensible source of national truth for buyers or regulators to rely on.

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The Turning Point

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The Ministry of Environment, Sustainable Development and the New Climate Economy took direct ownership of the registry's design, with TRST01 as technology provider building the platform under MEDDNEC's authority.

A legal and regulatory framework was submitted to the Ministry defining MEDDNEC as the designated national authority for carbon markets, establishing the legal basis for issuing, authorising and transferring carbon credits, and setting out the process for project approval and Letter of Authorisation issuance. The framework is set to move to parliamentary approval, followed by submission of DRC's carbon framework to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

The DRC named Lumière as its national carbon registry in May 2026 at Ecosperity Week in Singapore, with a fuller presentation delivered at the 8th Global Environment Facility Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in June 2026.

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The Solution: A Four-Tier Sovereign Registry

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Lumière is built as a four-tier platform, with TRST01 operating the system as technology provider on MEDDNEC's behalf. Through it, the Ministry, project developers, verification bodies and buyers each work through a dedicated portal, joined by a single shared registry.

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Execution

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• Sovereign governance layer: a DRC carbon framework, a national digital identity layer, a sovereign account and escrow arrangement, a banking supervision board, and know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) checks sit at the base of the platform, keeping oversight and settlement under national control.
• Government Portal: gives MEDDNEC registry administration, Letter of Authorisation issuance and management, an Article 6 corresponding-adjustment workflow, a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) accounting module, a tender and auction system for government-originated projects, and a public registry portal.
• Developer Portal: takes project developers from registration through verification: end-to-end project submission, a mandatory free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and social and environmental safeguards screening gate, satellite and field monitoring data upload, a geolocation layer with overlap and encroachment detection, automated credit issuance eligibility checks, and a sub-portal for validation and verification body (VVB) accreditation and sign-off.
• Buyer Portal: lets buyers browse the credit marketplace by methodology, vintage and project type, complete KYC and AML onboarding, confirm Article 6.2 authorisation at the point of purchase, and settle and retire credits through the sovereign account.
• Phased build: development is structured in phases, beginning with the registry foundation, its three integrated portals, AI agents, satellite integration and a cybersecurity baseline, followed by a national digital monitoring, reporting and verification (dMRV) build.
• Anchoring at meaningful scale: the first area brought onto the platform is a protected corridor covering approximately 15 percent of DRC's national territory, an expanse comparable in size to France, chosen to demonstrate the registry at meaningful scale from the outset within the Congo Basin.

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Verification

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• AI-centric dMRV: a four-layer pipeline acquires data from multiple satellite providers and field sensors, processes and fuses it, runs AI and machine learning models for forest cover, deforestation, degradation and biomass, and feeds validated results into the national registry, where they trigger credit issuance and settlement.
• Government-led authorisation: Letter of Authorisation issuance sits with MEDDNEC, and an Article 6 corresponding-adjustment workflow ensures internationally transferred mitigation outcomes are properly accounted for, not just recorded.
• A formal legal basis: the framework's path to parliamentary approval, followed by submission of DRC's carbon framework to the UNFCCC, is designed to give the registry's authority a footing recognised beyond DRC's own institutions.

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Results So Far

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Lumière is in active build. The following reflects verified progress to date rather than platform-wide figures, which are not yet meaningful at this stage.

• National naming and public unveiling: Lumière named as DRC's national carbon registry in Singapore, with a full platform presentation delivered at the GEF Assembly in Samarkand.
• Legal foundation underway: a legal and regulatory framework establishing MEDDNEC as the designated national carbon authority submitted for government review, ahead of parliamentary approval.
• Sovereign platform architecture in build: a four-tier registry spanning government, developer and buyer portals, satellite-based dMRV, and blockchain-backed audit logging, moving through active development.
• Meaningful scale from day one: first deployment area identified as a protected corridor covering approximately 15 percent of DRC's national territory within the Congo Basin.

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“Naming Lumiere is more than a milestone; it is a statement of intent. This is how the Congolese people take ownership of the value of their own natural heritage. We are not asking the world to take our climate ambition on trust. We are building the systems that make it verifiable, and at the GEF Assembly, we will show how.”

— Her Excellency Prof. Dr. Marie Nyange Ndambo, Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development and the New Climate Economy (MEDDNEC), DRC

Beyond Lumière

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Full operation is expected later in 2026, once the supporting legal framework completes its passage through the DRC's national legislature. On launch, the registry is expected to open for the onboarding of the country's Article 6 activity, bringing the projects already carrying Ministry-issued Letters of Authorisation, including the clean-cooking projects developed by Burn and Econetix, onto Lumière alongside new projects entering through the platform for the first time. Parallel work continues on the national dMRV build, extending monitoring from the first deployment corridor toward full national coverage.

For TRST01, Lumière extends a pattern of work with governments and public institutions as a technology and digital-infrastructure provider rather than a project developer or consultant-for-hire: building sovereign-grade systems while the government itself retains ownership of the outcome, the authority and the data. That is the same pattern behind TRST01's work as official technology partner to the Rubber Board of India on iSNR, its Digital Public Infrastructure blueprint work with the World Bank and the Government of Maharashtra on the Open AgriTrace Stack, and the Kisan Samrudhi carbon programme with the Government of Uttar Pradesh and IIT Roorkee.

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Why This Case Matters

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Lumière shows what it looks like when a resource-rich nation decides to govern its natural capital as sovereign infrastructure, legal framework, digital identity, escrow and compliance checks included, rather than a set of individually brokered deals, and what it takes for a technology partner to build that infrastructure without becoming the authority itself. MEDDNEC holds the Letters of Authorisation, the legal framework, and the final say on every portal; TRST01 builds and operates the system underneath.

It offers a template other Global South nations can point to: legal foundation first, a phased technical build, a deployment scaled meaningfully from day one, and a staged public rollout, naming, unveiling, then full operation, so credibility is built in stages rather than promised all at once.

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