Tropical forests are estimated to release approximately 1.7 PgC per year as a result of deforestation. Avoiding tropical deforestation could potentially play a significant role in carbon mitigation over the next 50 years if not longer. Many policymakers and negotiators are skeptical of our...

Motu is currently developing a dataset of production costs relating to different rural land uses, which we can use to help explain historical land-use trends at a Territorial Authority level. The Meat and Wool Economic Service farm survey provides a rich database containing physical and...

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...

From 1974 through 1997 the Galapagos experienced very rapid population growth, around six per cent per year. Sustained at this level, the population would continue to double every 12 years. Increased population brings an increased risk of invasive introduced species, which endangers the fragile...

Motu is currently developing a dataset of production costs relating to different rural land uses, which we can use to help explain historical land-use trends at a Territorial Authority level. The Meat and Wool Economic Service farm survey provides a rich database containing physical and...

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...

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...

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 tradeable permit programmes mature, two inter-related issues are becoming more critical in creating viable responses to a long-term, highly uncertain environmental problem such as climate change. First, we need to update policies in response to new information; and second, we need to design...

New Zealand’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are usually calculated by taking total emissions as reported under the Kyoto Protocol or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and simply dividing by population. However this focuses on emissions associated with production...