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Abstract
Agricultural and forestry greenhouse gas (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 (NZETS). Forestry entered the NZETS in 2008 while agricultural emissions
are expected to enter in 2015. Coupled with climate policy development is the increasing scrutiny of
agricultural impacts on water in New Zealand. Given the multiple forms of environmental regulation
facing the agricultural and forestry industries we explore, at the catchment level, the impacts of
climate policy on the agricultural and forestry industries, including those on farm returns, GHG
emissions, carbon sequestration, water quality and induced land use change. We use the recently
developed New Zealand Forest and Agriculture Regional Model (NZ-FARM) to assess potential
economic and environmental impacts of a climate policy that imposes a series of carbon prices on
GHG emissions of land-based production in the Manawatu and Hurunui/Waiau catchments in New
Zealand.