Using transferable water permits has been identified by economists as a necessary tool to efficiently allocate water to its highest valued use. Australian governments have seized the concept and begun to provide mechanisms that separate rights to water from land ownership and allow flexibility...

The greatest friction in trade and fishery between Japan and New Zealand was the Total Economic Relationship, which was insisted by the PM of NZ. NZ wanted to export dairy foods in exchange for admitting fishing. Both governments experienced a long and tough negotiation. Recently frictions have...

Nitrogen discharge into the Waikato River has been identified as the primary source of potential water quality degradation. Rising nitrogen levels in water are attributed to non point source pollution from agricultural activities. Pastoral farming is the predominant agricultural land use in the...

A risk efficient frontier for a pastoral farm indicates the optimal enterprise mix that allows the farmer to generate the highest income for a given level of financial risk. It is calculated by matching the available range of enterprises (sheep, beef cattle, deer, dairy, exotic forest and...

Beginning in 2000 Lincoln University has completed biennial surveys of people's perceptions of the state of the New Zealand environment. The surveys use the Pressure-State-Response framework for state of the environment reporting to assess resources such as air quality, native plants and...

Lakes Taupo and Rotorua are important to New Zealand, but declining lake water quality is increasingly becoming a problem. Primary producers are said to be impacting heavily on the lakes' water quality through discharges that reach them through streams and ground water. The paper discusses the...

There is a need for better understanding and estimating forests non-market values. This study aimed to investigate the environmental and social values of plantation forests in New Zealand focusing in Hawke’s Bay. Identified stakeholder groups considered Erosion control, Water quality and...

The National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management now requires that water quality objectives and limits be set for all water bodies in New Zealand. Where objectives result in the development of nitrate limits for waterways and development pressure is likely to make these limits difficult to...

The River Values Assessment System (RiVAS and RiVAS+) are tools that enable regional councils and others to ‘objectively’ and systematically evaluate rivers in their regions for their relative importance across the range of river values (e.g., native birds, irrigation and tangata whenau)....

Nutrient emissions from agricultural land are now widely recognized as one of the key contributors to poor water quality in local lakes, rivers and streams. Nutrient trading has been suggested as a regulatory tool to improve and protect water quality. However, farmers’ attitudes suggest that...