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Abstract
Agricultural and forestry GHG emissions are a key feature of New Zealand’s emissions
profile, and New Zealand is the only country, to date, to have indicated that agricultural and forestry
emissions will be covered under their domestic climate policy – the New Zealand Emissions Trading
Scheme. Coupled with climate policy development is the increasing scrutiny of agricultural impacts
on water. This paper uses New Zealand Forest and Agriculture Regional Model (NZ-FARM) to assess
the potential economic and environmental impacts of imposing both a climate and nutrient
reduction policy on the agricultural and forestry industries in the Manawatu and Hurunui/Waiau
catchments in New Zealand. We find that adding a scheme that reduces catchment-level nutrients
by 20% on top of a national policy that puts a price of $25 per ton carbon dioxide equivalent on
agricultural GHG emissions could result in greater environmental benefits at a relatively small cost,
but the converse is not always true and could be significantly more costly for landowners.