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This paper quantifies the economic impacts of flooding in the Ba River and Penang River catchments in Viti Levu, Fiji. We conducted a detailed assessment of flood damage stemming from two major flooding events in 2012 that severely affected the two important catchments, primarily by using evidence from a novel survey administered in early 2013. We combine these empirical measures of damage with GIS data to estimate total damages from flooding and find that the January 2012 flood caused FJ$36.4 and FJ$12.2 in damages for the Ba River and Penang River catchments, respectively, while the March 2012 flood caused FJ$24.1 and FJ$8.4 in damages for the Ba River and Penang River catchments, respectively. We then estimate the cost of future flooding under moderate and severe climate change projections. Flooding is projected to become more frequent and more severe under both scenarios, with annual losses increasing by 100% with moderate climate change and by 300% with severe climate change. For perspective, damages from a 1-in-50 year flood, which is the estimated return period of the January 2012 event, are projected to cause between FJ$76.5 and FJ$153 million in damages in the Ba River Catchment under these two scenarios.

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.

Invasive species pose an enormous threat in the Pacific: not only do they strongly affect biodiversity, but they also potentially affect the economic, social, and cultural wellbeing of Pacific peoples. Invasive species can potentially be managed and their impacts can potentially be avoided, eliminated, or reduced. However, neither the costs nor the numerous benefits of management are well understood in the Pacific. Thus, we undertook cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) of managing five species that are well established on Viti Levu, Fiji: spathodea campanulata (African tulip tree), herpestus javanicus (small Asian mongoose), papuana uninodis (taro beetle), pycnonotus cafer (red-vented bulbul), and merremia peltata (merremia vine). These CBAs are informed by extensive survey data that record the incidence, management, and impacts of the five species in Fiji. We find that the most cost-effective management option varies by species, precluding a universal solution. Nevertheless, the benefits of management often exceed the costs of management by a wide margin, arguing for a more concerted effort to control the spread of invasive species in the Pacific.

This paper uses responses from a regional farmer survey that identify farmers’ perceptions of environmental policies to calibrate a catchment-level environmental economic model (NZ-FARM) to estimate the impacts of a nutrient reduction policy in North Canterbury, New Zealand. The model maximizes farm income across a catchment, accounting for changes in land use, farm output, nutrient leaching, and GHG emissions. Simulations estimate that reducing nutrient loads by 15–30% can be achieved with economic impacts ranging between 1 and 10%, based on how willing landowners are to change how they manage their farm. Farmers are often hesitant to implement certain mitigation options, however, which results in higher economic costs than the ‘optimal’ estimates. Farm-level impacts will likely vary through the current farm practice, the farmers’ attitude towards the regulation, and the ability of policymakers to educate and incentivise landowners to adopt a variety of land management options.

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.

This paper uses an economic catchment model to assess changes in land use, enterprise distribution, greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient loading levels from a series of policies that introduce carbon prices or nutrient reduction caps on land-based production in the Hurunui Catchment in Canterbury, New Zealand. At $20/tCO2e, net revenue for the catchment is reduced by 7% from baseline levels while GHGs are reduced by 3%. At $40/ tCO2e, net revenue is reduced by 15% while GHGs are reduced by 21%. Nitrogen and phosphorous loading levels within the catchment were also reduced when landowners face a carbon price, thus providing other benefits to the environment. Additional scenarios in this paper assess the impacts from developing a large-scale irrigation project within the catchment. Results show that while adding irrigation can improve farm output and revenue, it also results in dramatically higher GHG emissions and nutrient loads. Placing a carbon price on land-based activities diminishes some of these pollutants, but not at the same rate as when the policy what enacted on the baseline irrigation levels. Finally, we investigate the impacts of imposing a nutrient loading cap on farm activities instead of a carbon price and find that if landowners had greater access to irrigation but were constrained to hold the nutrient loads at baseline levels, revenue could increase by 6% over the baseline while GHG emissions could be reduced by 5%. Our findings suggest that while there is a potentially a strong trade-off between water quantity and water quality in the Hurunui Catchment, imposing the right policy levers could reduce some of the environmental impacts from an increase in land-use intensity without placing a large economic or regulatory burden on its landowners.

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.

Despite the importance of the agricultural and downstream processing sectors in the New Zealand economy, there is no tradition of using partial or general equilibrium models to evaluate policies or other measures directed at the agricultural sector. Policy-makers have instead relied on the development of ad hoc scenarios of land use change, farm budget models, and simple multiplier analysis of flow-on effects. To redress this situation, we have developed a catchment-scale partial equilibrium framework based on the US REAP model, which we have thus far calibrated for two different catchments. In this paper, we present an application of the model to the Hurunui Catchment in North Canterbury in which we assess several scenarios for the development of irrigated area under several water storage options. This application is timely, given that there are increasing pressures on water resources in the catchment, and frequent conflicts between abstractive users (mainly pastoral), recreational users (e.g. kayaking, fishing) users, and environmental needs. Currently, a private consortium are pursuing storage options similar to those that we have modelled, while a newly constituted Water Management Zone Committee is tasked with developing a strategic approach to managing water in the Hurunui and adjacent Waiau catchments. In addition, water quality limits are also being developed in the Hurunui catchment. Our modelling approach includes pastoral (dairy, sheep, beef and deer), arable, horticultural and forestry enterprises along with an array of management including various irrigation and fertiliser regimes. The model allows us to test policy scenarios for addressing environmental issues such as mitigating climate change and improving water quality, and changes in resource constraints such as water availability. Using a profit maximizing objective function we compare the impact of the proposed irrigation scenarios in the Hurunui catchment on total catchment profits and a variety of environmental parameters like greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient losses.

A key consideration for development of energy and climate policy affecting the forestry and agricultural sectors is that the selection of specific mechanisms implemented to achieve bioenergy production and/or greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets may have substantial effects on landowner incentives to adopt alternative practices. For instance, the prices of allowances and offsets are expected to diverge under some policies being considered where there is a binding cap on the quantity of offsets from the agricultural and forest sectors. In addition, provisions that limit or exclude specific practices from receiving carbon payments will affect the quantity and cost of GHG mitigation opportunities available. In this study, the recently updated Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model with GHGs (FASOMGHG) was used to estimate GHG mitigation potential for private land in the contiguous U.S. under a variety of GHG price policies. Model scenarios suggest that U.S. forestry and agriculture could provide mitigation of 200 – 1000 megatons carbon dioxide equivalent per year (Mt CO2e/year) at carbon prices of $15 to $50/tCO2e. Binding limits on offsets have increasingly large effects on both the total magnitude and distribution of GHG mitigation across options over time. In addition, discounting or excluding payments for forest sinks can reduce annualized land-based mitigation potential 37-90 percent relative to the full eligibility scenario whereas discounting or excluding agricultural practices reduces mitigation potential by less than 10 percent.

This paper develops a model that solves for the optimal economic harvest rotation problem to maximize revenue of an even-aged forest plantation when there is a risk of a catastrophic forest fire. The paper also investigates the feasibility of using fire prone stands for carbon sequestration and estimates the effects that it would have on the optimal management regime and rotation age empirically using a typical Douglas-fir stand in the Pacific Northwest. The model incorporates risk-reducing management practices that allow risk and growth to be endogenous, and the optimal rotation model is solved using numerical simulation techniques. Results show that higher carbon prices increase the rotation length regardless of the probability of fire and that the frequency of risk-reducing management practices increase as the stand approaches the optimal harvest age. Results also indicate that intermediate fuel treatments can provide economical and environmental benefits, even with a high probability of fire.

This paper examines the competitiveness of the US timber industry under different exchange rate policies using a dynamic optimization model of global timber markets. We assume that exchange rates affect the cost structure of harvesting and managing forests and simulate the model for baseline conditions and four additional exchange rate policies. Two policies consider a strengthening United States dollar scenario and two policies examine weak South American currencies. Recently South America has increased its share of global timber production and is shipping increasing quantities of timber to the Unites States. The results indicate that US competitiveness in the forestry sector is sensitive both to strong US $ policies and to the weak currency policies pursued by South American governments. A 20% increase in value of the US $ compared to all other currencies can reduce harvests by 4 7% in the United States over the next 50 years, while a similar reduction in currency values in South America can reduce U.S. production by around 0.4%. In dollar terms, each additional cubic meter of wood produced in South America due to currency policies can reduce producer surplus in the United States by $100.