Under the New Zealand Emission Trading System (NZETS), post-1989 forestry land (the exotic or indigenous forest land that was not used for plantation on 31 December 1989) in New Zealand is eligible for reward for each tonne of CO2-eqv sequestrated by reverting from pasture to indigenous scrub....

We consider two approaches to quantify New Zealand farmers’ ability to mitigate their farm’s environmental impact: The construction of marginal abatement cost curves and improvements in farm management practices. Marginal abatement cost curves can be constructed by combining information on...

The intensity of agricultural production affects both nutrient and greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental policy designed to reduce one type of pollution may have complementary effects on the other type. This paper explores this issue in the Lake Rotorua catchment in New Zealand using an...

This paper uses a national dataset from 1980 to 2010 of valuations and sales data by land use category from Quotable Value New Zealand to explore patterns in and potential drivers of values of rural land in New Zealand over time. Increasing our understanding of the drivers of rural land values...

This paper provides a concise introduction to and evaluation of the Lake Taupo nitrogen cap and trade program established as part of Waikato Regional Council's recent Regional Plan Variation Five. The policy establishes a catchment-wide cap on nitrogen losses by allocating farmers individual...

As part of international climate change policy, voluntary opt-in programs to reduce emissions in unregulated sectors or countries have spurred considerable discussion. Since any regulator will make errors in predicting baselines, adverse selection will reduce efficiency since participants will...

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) was introduced through the Climate Change Response Act in September 2008 and remains in force. The forestry sector has been directly affected by the NZ ETS since 1 January 2008 and stationary energy, liquid fuels and industrial emissions have...

Regional Councils are primarily responsible for environmental management, as specified in the Resource Management Act (RMA), 1991. The Local Government Act 2002 has an integrative component, requiring consideration of social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of their communities....

The question of how to effectively address agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is of critical importance for New Zealand and the world. Ensuring that our responses are effective requires us to first consider what we aim to achieve: why do we care about agricultural emissions? This paper...