Anita Wreford

Anita Barbara Wreford is a New Zealand applied economist, and is a full professor at Lincoln University, specialising in climate change adaptation.

Academic career
Wreford completed a Master of Applied Science degree in natural resource management at Massey University, supervised by John Holland and Terry Kelly. She then moved to Lincoln University where she completed a PhD titled The impact of international trade liberalisation on the emissions of agricultural greenhouse gases in 2006. Her supervisors were Caroline Saunders and Paul Dalziel. Wreford did postdoctoral research in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, including at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre and Scotland's Rural College. Returning to New Zealand, Wreford was a senior economist at Scion, before joining the faculty at Lincoln University, rising to full professor in 2022.

Wreford works as part of the university's Agribusiness and Economic Research Unit. Her research focuses on climate change mitigation and adaptation. She is the leader of the Deep South Challenge's Impacts and Implications programme. She was lead author on two IPCC reports, the 2019 Special Report on Climate Change and Land and the Australasia chapter of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Wreford is on the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics editorial board. She has provided policy advice at local and national government level within New Zealand, and has also contributed to the UK's Committee on Climate Change and the Scottish government's ClimateXChange programme.