Press Release Detail

The Government, through the Ministry of Forestry, continues to promote Fiji’s landscape restoration programme, which is to plant 30 million trees and mangroves in 15 years in an effort to combat the climate crisis and restore biodiversity.
The Ministry would like to announce that since its establishment in September 2019, it has planted 18.1 million trees and mangroves. This amounts to 60 percent of the 30 million seedlings that the project hopes to plant over the course of 15 years, accomplishing more than half of its objective in that time.
The planting activity will further strengthen following the 2022-2023 Budget Address by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Strategic Planning, National Development and Statistics, Hon. Professor Biman Prasad, on June 30, 2023. 
He had announced that a sum of $2.5 million had been allocated for the Reforestation of Degraded Forests (RDF) with indigenous and other species.
The funding allocated will be used to address challenges and ensure the survival of trees planted by undertaking extensive monitoring, enhancing quality seed collection, propagation, and planting protocols.
Hon. Prasad further announced that an additional $2 million was also allocated for REDD+ and the Forest Emissions Reduction Programme.
REDD+ refers to mitigation actions in developing countries relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, with the "plus" signifying conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
Fiji Pine Limited (FPL) and Fiji Hardwood Corporation Limited (FHCL) are two companies that have contributed the largest planting target in the RDF programme while visitors, communal landowners, and individual landowners have planted the balance with technical guidance and assistance from the Ministry.
FPL has planted 13,634,281 trees, while FHCL has planted 260,393 trees. 

 The total number of trees that have been planted and verified to date since 2019 (as per planting dashboard) under the 30MT15Y Initiative is 18.1 million trees. 

Of the 18,146,046 trees that has been planted and are highlighted in the Ministry's 30MT15Y Dashboard, 17,396,046 are trees (exotic, native, fruit and coastal species trees) and 750,000 are mangroves.

Acting Executive Director Operation Services, George Vuki, thanked the companies, organisations, communities and individuals for supporting the planting programme.

"One of the most powerful strategies for addressing the climate crisis and restoring biodiversity is tree planting. Inadequately planned reforestation and afforestation projects, however, have the potential to increase emissions and harm ecosystems even though trees are naturally efficient carbon capture and storage machines," Mr Vuki said.

"We urge organisations and the general public to continue supporting the Ministry’s tree planting efforts.

Tree planting is only facilitated by the Government. The planted trees belong to the communities and not the Government, so we ask the public to plant trees."