Impact 1 - Trends
Thomas Wilding (Hawkes Bay Regional Council)discussing water issues during a field trip for a workshop on participatory processes. Image - Suzie Greenhalgh
Approaches to resolving complex environmental issues are understood, and opportunities recognised for adapting to global change and reducing vulnerability to resource scarcity.
NZ-FARM
Farmers are increasingly faced with multiple environmental constraints. We designed the NZ-FARM (NZ Forest and Agricultural Regional Model) to help farmers and agencies assess the impacts of changes in land use, agricultural output, farm management, environmental impacts and climate and water policies on farm incomes. It is particularly useful for regions (such as Canterbury for the Selwyn-Waihora and Hinds water management zones) undertaking processes to set nutrient limits where agricultural production is expected to expand or intensify.
We used NZ-FARM to assess the economic impacts of climate and water policies in the Hurunui and Waiau catchments in North Canterbury. This showed a nutrient reduction target of 25% below baseline levels could be achieved (plus noticeable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from farming activities) with relatively modest declines in total net revenue.
The integrated nutrient–greenhouse gas policy had less impact on farm income and produced greater environmental benefits than just charging greenhouse gas emissions at $12.50 per tCO2e. Simultaneously imposing both a nutrient reduction policy and greenhouse gas price of $25 per tCO2e could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions although it would not reduce nutrient loads much beyond the stand-alone policy, and net income for farmers would drop by 17%.
This research is part of the Enhancing Policy Development portfolio. Development of this model has been supported by MBIE and MPI with analysis supported by MfE, ECan and MPI.
Survey of Rural Decision Makers
Scientists and governments are increasingly looking for ways to understand the complexity and outcomes of interactions between human agents and their environment, particularly with regard to the impact of agricultural practices on the environment. To strengthen modelling for the rural sector, we collected data from 528 farmers, foresters, and growers in Canterbury, Southland, and Waikato. Topics included demographics; farm/forest/growing operation characteristics; succession plans; risk tolerance; profitability; information sources; objectives; management practices; intentions; perceived behavioural control; subjective norms; and environmental attitudes.
On 1 July 2013, the survey was also rolled out to the other regions.
The ‘real-life, on-the-ground data’ feed into spatially-explicit economic models such as our Agent-based Rural Land Use New Zealand (ARLUNZ), which helps forecast land use effects resulting from changes in social networks and decision-making, and NZ-FARM. In addition, the survey data are intrinsically useful and interesting, and the survey has prompted discussions regarding further work with two councils.
This research is part of the Enhancing Policy Development portfolio. The ‘Survey of Rural Decision Makers’ was designed jointly by Landcare Research and AgResearch with input from MfE, MPI and DairyNZ; it is part of a wider programme of work that will enable the developers of agent-based models to include a wider range of validated behaviour types into their modeling. MfE provided funding.
Biodiversity offsets
Biodiversity offsets are increasingly advocated as a means of resolving conflict between development and biodiversity conservation. Generally a loss at the affected site is offset by improving or protecting biodiversity at another site but it is inherently difficult to design fair exchanges because biodiversity is extremely complex. In this sense, biodiversity offsets can be seen as biodiversity loans. But the equity or fairness of these biodiversity loans is difficult to assess because the equity must be assessed in time, space and the type of biodiversity exchanged. We used concepts from financial accounting (to deal with trading over time), combined with biodiversity measures from conservation biology theory to determine fair biodiversity trades in type and space. The approach takes into account both averted biodiversity loss (where the offset increases protection of similar biodiversity in other places) and out-of-kind offsets (where the biodiversity gained in the offset is different from that affected).
While the calculations and information are complex, we demonstrated a simple and effective way to present the offset information, even where a fair exchange is difficult to understand. This work is a significant step forward in enabling more robust design of biodiversity offsets.
This research is part of both the Managing Biodiversity and Supporting Trade portfolios, and was supported by Core funding and Cross Department Research Pool funding administered by DOC.
Participatory processes for water management
Land and Water Forum recommendations and government freshwater reform indicate that collaborative processes involving decision-makers and local stakeholders are the future pathway for resolving contentious freshwater management issues and setting water limits. Supporting and refining these processes were an integral part of the freshwater Values, Monitoring and Outcomes (VMO) research programme. VMO was specifically designed to identify solutions to resolve contentious water issues and is providing advice around policy reform in a rapidly changing ‘water environment.’
As part of these water reforms, all regional councils will soon be required to run collaborative processes to set limits for water quality and water use; and our 5th Regional Council Forum focused on this issue. The forum provided an avenue for three ‘early adopter’ councils (Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, and Canterbury) to compare their respective approaches and for the other three councils to consider where and how they could facilitate collaborative participatory processes within their regions. The VMO experience will provide advice to MfE on new water governance processes.
This research is part of the Enhancing Policy Development portfolio, and was supported by MBIE contestable funding.
Water trading
Water quality trading could provide New Zealand with greater flexibility and lower the cost of meeting water limits. We reviewed and compared existing and evolving water trading programmes in Australia, New Zealand and North America. We illustrated both differences and similarities between programmes and identified the main hurdles to trading as well as some key factors for programme success. This comprehensive review of what makes water quality trading programmes successful or not will improve the design and implementation of trading programmes.
This research is part of the Enhancing Policy Development portfolio. This analysis was supported by Core funding and MBIE contestable funding; our USA partner was supported by the Packard Foundation.