Appendix 2: Funding for the Programme of Action

Many projects in the Sustainable Development for New Zealand: Programme of Action (the Programme of Action) workstreams were selected from existing projects or from work already identified by departments as future work. Most central government funding was reallocated from existing budgets.

However, we estimate about $23 million was allocated to the Programme of Action and the Sustainable Cities and Energy workstreams from July 2003 to July 2006 (inclusive).

The first year (2003/04) was mostly spent identifying and preparing Budget bids for the workstreams. In 2003/04, more than $2 million was reallocated from the Growth and Innovation Framework to the Sustainable Cities workstream.

In 2004/05, funding from 2004/05 to 2006/07 was agreed for Sustainable Cities workstream initiatives, mostly for Auckland Programme projects, totalling about $3 million. While this Auckland Programme funding was settled in May 2004 in the Budget for 2004/05, which was nearly halfway through the life of the Programme of Action, many projects were already under way.

In 2005/06, central government staff prepared a Sustainability Package as part of the Budget preparation, which included Energy workstream-related bids ($6 million) that, among other things, supported energy policy capacity and the Electricity Commission.

The 2006/07 Budget provided more than $12 million to Statistics New Zealand to support the preparation of national and sub-national indicators for sustainable development.

These allocations of funding to projects relating to the Programme of Action and the Sustainable Cities and Energy workstreams total $23 million.

This amount does not include the funding for:

• sustainable development-related bids that were also part of the Sustainability Package in 2005/06, such as funding within the Ministry of Transport or the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology for associated research initiatives;
• existing and continuing work being carried out by departments such as the Ministry for the Environment’s work on environmental standards (one of the Sustainable Cities workstream objectives);
• Water workstream;
• Child and Youth workstream;
• Sustainable Cities workstream funding for the Child and Youth workstream ($725,000);
• Sustainable Cities workstream funding for the Auckland Regional Policy Statement ($670,000); and
• the local government funding of the Auckland Programme. This programme involved staff from eight local authorities working on multiple projects. Direct costs included funding for a project manager.