The Significance of Analyzing Carbon Farming

New Zealand has taken a progressive step in developing a national trading system for greenhouse gas emissions that includes the land-use sector. The Permanent Forest Sink Initiative (PFSI) creates a mechanism for private landowners to take advantage of carbon sequestration opportunities on their own land, quantify the social benefits of sequestration, and receive income from domestic or international carbon markets as compensation for their efforts. Private landowners will now have an economic incentive to reduce New Zealand’s net emissions by changing their land use. If the market works properly, private landowners will begin generating a pool of cost-effective carbon credits that the New Zealand government, private firms, or international buyers can utilize to meet their own commitments to reducing climate change. Yet, until now, little was known about the potential size of this pool, the profitability of carbon sequestration for landowners, the types of land management they might apply, what areas would be affected by land-use changes, and whether disadvantaged rural communities like Māori would be able to benefit from this policy. In my dissertation, I examined the factors that will affect the adoption of the policy and the resulting changes in land use, including whether the policy creates new income opportunities for indigenous landowners. I evaluated the potential for a land management system using native forest restoration, which I call “carbon farming, ” to generate revenue from carbon sequestration. At the heart of this analysis is a conceptual model of decision-making for landowners. This model has four key elements. First, it is underpinned by spatially explicit biophysical information, which determines what is possible for landowners t