Hendy and Kerr (2005b) find that an emissions charge on agricultural methane and nitrous oxide of $25 per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent would be likely to reduce New Zealand‘s net land-use related emissions for commitment period one in the order of 3%, with full accounting. The...

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...

This paper describes preliminary work on establishing a pilot project for carbon sequestration. The project is intended to simulate the structure of the Permanent Forest Sinks Initiative, a program that may extend to the national level under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture and...

Emissions trading and nutrient trading interact in critical ways. The agricultural sector is a major emitter of both nutrients and greenhouse gases in New Zealand. Thus the simultaneous implementation of such systems will have a large impact on the farmers in affected catchments. Many of the...

A crucial factor in the success of any water quality trading market is its ability to cost-effectively reallocate nutrient allowances from initial holders to those users who find them most valuable; the market's trading efficiency. We explore causes of and solutions to trading inefficiency by...

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...

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...

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....

Several different New Zealand economic models produce measures of rural economic activity that have greenhouse gas implications. For climate change analysis, models need to translate economic activity into greenhouse gas emissions. This document estimates functions and creates projections for...