Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 504

New Zealand has many advantages when it comes to transitioning to a low-fossil
carbon economy. These include a low population in relation to its land area, food
sustainability and the potential for increased wind and HEP renewable resources.
However, its population is set to grow and its agriculture intensify.
New Zealand is somewhat different to the other case study nations in this chapter,
which need to curb their fossil carbon emissions if they are to significantly reduce their
overall greenhouse gas emissions. Sources of emissions in these nations are similar to
the global proportion of greenhouse gases emitted (see Figure 1.2b). Conversely, less
than half of New Zealand's emissions (in terms of 100-year global warming potential;
see section 1.2) in 2008 were from fossil energy use (carbon dioxide), and a minor
contribution was made by industry and solvents (CFCs, etc.). However, 47% were
in the form of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture (see Figure 8.9b): New
Zealand's agriculture is an important greenhouse emissions sector. As the country's
agricultural industry intensifies, there will be pressure to increase nitrogenous inputs,
which will hence lead to increasing nitrous oxide emissions. In 2007 the Agribusiness
and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University reported that New Zealand
agriculture has such low energy and nitrogen inputs that the UK had 34% more
greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of milk solids and 30% more per hectare
than New Zealand for dairy production, even including the emissions resulting from
shipping to the UK (Saunders and Barber, 2007). Can New Zealand continue to
be such a greenhouse-efficient agricultural producer with higher inputs in a more
populated mid-21st-century world?
In August 2009 New Zealand announced an emissions-reduction target for 2020
of 10-20% below 1990 levels. The 2020 target is conditional upon an effective
global agreement, including appropriate commitments by developed and developing
countries, and rules relating to land use and forestry and carbon markets that are
important to New Zealand (Ministry for the Environment, 2011). Then in March
2011 Climate Change Minister Nick Smith announced the Government's long-term
target of a 50% reduction in New Zealand greenhouse gases emissions from 1990
levels by 2050.
New Zealand, starting in 2002, tried to introduce a carbon tax but, following a
review of climate policy in 2005, did not introduce it. In 2008 it introduced the
NZ Emissions Trading Scheme but the timetable for different economic sectors to
enter the scheme is spread over a number of years: agriculture is not scheduled to
enter it until 2015. The scheme (in common with a number of other trading schemes
in different countries) has been criticised for the number of free emission permits
allocated.
So far in this chapter we have looked at carbon drivers and carbon trends that have
affected the anthropogenic manipulation of the carbon cycle. This manipulation has in
one sense been inadvertent because it was not intended, only the harnessing of energy
resources. These drivers have shaped our species' manipulation of the biosphere's
carbon cycle, and will in all likelihood continue to do so in the future. So, given
current carbon trends in developed (currently high-carbon-emitting) and developing
(potential future high-carbon-emitting) nations, can we now manage our effect on
the carbon cycle with a view to reducing our forcing of the climate, for example
as the Kyoto Protocol intended? Also, can we also do this to meet sustainability