15 Sep 2007

NZ development agency welcomes SPREP meetings

10:32 am on 15 September 2007

The New Zealand Agency for International Development says the Pacific Regional Environment Programme meetings are a good way to see how funding has been used in the Pacific.

The SPREP meeting is currently underway in Samoa, with two representatives from New Zealand.

Tom Wilson of the NZ agency says one point eight million dollars is injected into SPREP programmes, where he says have helped the Pacific countries to carry out conservation work.

But he says the New Zealand funding goes to a range of activities.

"Dealing with the threat of climate change, that be coastal protection, water supplies, it also deals the with issue such as protecting the region's declining bio diversity, trying to hold that decline and a range of other forms of assistance to the environment departments and environment agencies that operate throughout the Pacific in all sorts of areas from reefs to mountains and across the boards so that's NZ's assistance."

Tom Wilson says the NZ funding has gone some way towards reducing poverty