The Government will provide an extra $240 million to help reach its goal of planting one billion trees in 10 years, effectively doubling the amount of money the scheme already had in its budget.
The new money comes from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) and comprises $120 million for partnership projects and $118 million set aside for grants.
And Minister of Regional Economic Development Shane Jones says he has plans for more money to be spent on the Government’s “ambitious” tree planting programme.
This new announcement is despite Jones saying in February just $180 million of the $3 billion fund would be used on the one billion trees project. And this new money is on top of the $245 million already committed from the PGF to the one billion trees initiative.
But speaking at the Prime Minister post Cabinet press conference, Jones said that $180 million was, in fact, referring to the “upper limit in terms of the schemes joint ventures.
The move to inject the additional funds was approved by Cabinet on Monday.
“The new grants scheme will provide simple and accessible direct funding to landowners for the cost of planting and establishing trees and regenerating indigenous forest,” Jones says.
Private landowners, government agencies, NGOs and iwi will all be able to apply with the money becoming available later this year.
In total, Jones expects the $118 million of grant money to see an additional 60 million new trees planted over the next three years.
This works out to almost $2 per tree.
“It’s a significant amount of money, but it was never going to be cheap,” Jones says.
He told reporters that he is expecting to have to add more money from the PGF into the project.
Asked how much, he said “the thick end of half a billion.”
“That’s the upper end of what we’re going to be able to chew through, prior to 2020.”
Jones says the $120 million for the “partnership fund” will create an “even closer working relationship” between Te Uru Rākau and regional councils, NGOs, training organisations, Māori landowners and community groups.
“This approach will allow us to leverage co-funding opportunities and existing know-how and experience.”
Jones says he will be looking at promoting innovation, securing sufficient labour to get trees in the ground and providing support and advice to landowners on how they can improve land-use.
According to numbers from the Minister of Primary Industries (MPI), some 53,900,000 trees have been planted since the programme was announced.
That has been at a cost of $6.5 million to the Government.
Monday's $240 million of extra funding has been pre-committed against the PGF's 2019 budget.
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