The New Zealand Government has enacted an emissions trading scheme (ETS) under which owners of
Kyoto-compliant forests will receive/surrender units for increases/decreases in the carbon stocks of their
plantations. Each unit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) and can be traded. In this paper we
evaluate the potential impact of the ETS on forest management decisions including whether to establish new
forest, choice of species and silviculture, and forest rotation length. Criteria used in the analysis are financial
return (LEV or NPV) and carbon price risk (cost or percentage of units to be surrendered after harvest).
Results show that carbon trading has the potential to increase forest profitability and influence the choice of
silviculture. Forest rotation length increases with expected carbon price. However there is considerable risk
arising from carbon prices. We develop strategies that hedge against carbon price risk at both the stand level
and the forest estate level. The former include growing a valuable crop and trading only a portion of units
received. The latter includes managing forest structure via age-class composition. We evaluate trade-offs
between financial return and risk in order to identify the opportunity cost of strategies that are robust
against future carbon prices.