This paper maps the sites of forest carbon market development in the Asia-Pacific region. Institutional architecture for the forest carbon market is fast developing amidst a chorus of claims that it is, or will be, a win-win-win apparatus for ecological, economic and social outcomes. However the various experiments in forest offset projects and inter-state agreements for REDD lurch forward in the midst of growing evidence of governance failure and corruption. The claimed victories and simultaneous crises of legitimacy faced by REDD initiatives in the Asia-Pacific exemplify the impacts and tensions behind carbon market extension into the world’s forests. Points of contention over seminal state-led pilot initiatives as well as corporate REDD projects for the voluntary market in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are considered as early signs of the trajectories of REDD marketisation. This review of REDD in the region opens up questions for future investigations into the shifting modes of authority that make this process possible.