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<h1>Suzi Kerr: The role of land use change</h1>
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<p><strong>Synopsis</strong></p>
<p>Suzi Kerr, a Senior Fellow at Motu and an Adjunct Professor at Victoria University, then spoke about the role of land use change. She opened with the fact that on farm solutions are not going to be enough to hit NZ&rsquo;s climate change targets. There are three key options for diversifying land use: (i) forestry/natives; (ii) existing horticulture alternatives; and (iii) new products, including high-value foods. Suzi went through these options in turn. With respect to planting more forests, it&rsquo;s not something that we can continue to add indefinitely. Native forests are longer lasting, but to date no one has been planting these in response to the ETS. Additionally, forestry isn&rsquo;t reducing agricultural GHGs, it is sequestering carbon. If trees are planted on marginal land, then there weren&rsquo;t many GHGs coming from that land anyway. When considering horticulture, Suzi questioned why people aren&rsquo;t planting alternatives currently. The reasons include risk and uncertainty, behavioural barriers and capacity and capital requirements. As biological GHGs aren&rsquo;t currently priced, there is little incentive to consider other options. Even a small cost would encourage farmers to look at alternative land uses. Suzi then considered the other products that could be grown in NZ. She questioned whether there could be more investigation into these and more funding for experimental areas. There are people looking at products such as insect farming, lavender and saffron in NZ. These are currently at a cottage industry scale and it can be difficult to scale up. There are a number of &lsquo;crazes&rsquo; that have been popular in the past, such as ostriches and goats, which have never reached a significant scale. In closing, Suzi suggested a number of policies and actions that could encourage land owners to consider diversifying the way that they manage their land. These included: (i) basic research on new products; (ii) supporting early adoption with field trials and evaluation; (iii) support for emerging industries; and (iv) pricing biological GHGs.</p>
<p><strong>View slides</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://motu.nz/our-work/environment-and-resources/emission-mitigation/agricultural-greenhouse-gas-emissions/the-role-of-land-use-change/">http://motu.nz/our-work/environment-and-resources/emission-mitigation/agricultural-greenhouse-gas-emissions/the-role-of-land-use-change/</a></p>
<p><strong>About Suzi</strong></p>
<p>Suzi Kerr is currently a Senior Fellow at Motu, a Principal Investigator in Te Punaha Matatini - a Centre of Research Excellence and an Adjunct Professor at Victoria University. She graduated from Harvard University in 1995 with a PhD in Economics. From 1998 to 2009 she was Director and Senior Fellow at Motu. In 2010 she won the NZIER Economics Award. She has also worked at the University of Maryland at College Park, Resources for the Future (USA), the Joint Center for the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT, and more recently was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University for the 2009/10 year and at the University of the Andes in Bogot&aacute;, Colombia in the first half of 2014.Her current research work focuses on climate change. She empirically and theoretically investigates domestic and international climate change policy with special emphasis on emissions pricing and land use in both the tropics and New Zealand. She is Programme Leader for the Impacts and Implications programme of the Deep South National Science Challenge. She has previously worked extensively on economic instruments for managing water quality, fisheries and air quality. She has run four policy dialogue processes, one in the lead up to the establishment of New Zealand&rsquo;s emissions trading system, others on managing water quality in Lake Rotorua, on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and (co-led) on New Zealand&rsquo;s Low Emissions Future, and she is currently leading a dialogue on New Zealand&rsquo;s ETS.&nbsp;</p>
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