Gases. The authors wish to thank all the interviewees for their time, insights, and knowledge shared. Without their contributions this paper would not have been possible. This paper has greatly benefitted from comments from Cecile de Klein, Robyn Dimes, Joorie Knook and Shaan Badenhorst. Our thanks for their review. Disclaimer The authors are responsible for all opinions expressed and any errors or omissions. Human ethics approval was granted by AgResearch. In addition, human ethics approval was given by the Victoria University of Wellington for the interviews on Māori farms (Human Ethics Committee 24856).

Forestry investment involves long time horizons, and planting decisions must be made amidst a range of uncertainties. In the context of these uncertainties, we analyse investment decisions that involve plantation of existing grazing land in exotic versus indigenous forest species. We discuss how investment irreversibility coupled with uncertainty (and the ability to learn about the uncertain factors prior to making an investment decision) impact on the forestry investment decision. The twin features of investment irreversibility plus uncertainty are particularly relevant in relation to the new “permanent forest” category under New Zealand’s Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020. We provide background to the new regime by reviewing the permanent forest category, and we also review relevant investment theories. The issues facing investors are illustrated with reference to a recent study that explored the role of climate uncertainty for forestry investment decisions.

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New Zealand scientists have suggested that multiple pastoral farming practices could reduce onfarm biological greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while maintaining (and in some circumstances even increasing) farm profits (e.g. de Klein and Dynes, 2017). However, these win–win practices (which we define as “no-cost” mitigation practices) are reported to be under-adopted in New Zealand (Reisinger et al. 2018). The focus of this paper is to identify barriers affecting the adoption or expansion of no-cost mitigation practices by farmers in New Zealand. We define and categorize barriers to adoption using a typology of barriers developed by Jaffe (2017). This typology provides a comprehensive list and precise/accurate description of multiple barriers that might be present in farming contexts. First, we confront the typology with empirical evidence in the literature studying the barriers to the adoptions of technologies and practices in the context of pastoral farming. Although the evidence on perceptions and adoption of GHG emissions mitigation options in New Zealand is very limited, several of the barriers in Jaffe’s typology have been evidenced by researchers as affecting the decisions to adopt different innovative technologies and practices on farms. To complement the literature review and, more importantly, focus on no-cost GHG mitigation practices, we conducted interviews with 14 farmers in different regions of the country. In these conversations we discussed different managerial and practical implications of five different no-cost farming practices, with the aim of identifying barriers that affect their adoption or expansion. We describe in the paper more than 40 quotes obtained from farmers, from which we identified the occurrence of 16 different barriers. Among these, the “Unsureness about practicality”, “risk and uncertainty” and “complex interactions” barriers showed as the most frequent barriers identified as causing under-adoption of the evaluated practices. In addition, different types of perceived costs (financial barriers), such as “modelling mismatch” and “learning and adjustment”, have been pointed out as a limitation for adoption (which are captured by barriers category “arguably efficient” in Jaffe’s typology). We also found that in some cases non-financial barriers seem to be interconnected – in especial the case when the interactions’ complexity increases the riskiness of the outcome (the “risk and uncertainty” barrier) and makes it difficult to see whether the mitigation option is practical (a barrier of “unsureness about practicality”). iii We expand our analysis to the identification of barriers on other practices that have not been necessarily defined as no-cost. Namely, the use of dairy bobby calves in the sheep and beef industry and once a day milking. Finally, we also recorded quotes from farmers regarding their direct perception of the different barriers from Jaffe’s typology. This complements our analysis with comments from farmers with respect to implications of the multiple barriers investigated. Our findings are relevant because they not only point out the need for further research to investigate the no-cost status of different practices in different contexts, but also highlight different non-financial barriers that directly affect the adoption of mitigation practices. Identifying these barriers is key for future policy planning and GHG mitigation research, as, with clearer signals and incentive mechanisms, policy can better inform the decision-making of farmers, therefore reducing on-farm GHG emissions throughout New Zealand.