As a leading global oil producer, the kingdom fully recognizes its share of responsibility in advancing the fight against the climate crisis. Saudi Arabia and the region face “significant climate challenges”, such as desertification, an immediate economic risk to the kingdom and the region. Air pollution from greenhouse gases also is estimated to have shortened average Saudi life expectancy by 1.5 years. The Saudi Green Initiative to raise the vegetation cover, reduce carbon emissions, combat pollution and land degradation and preserve marine life. The initiative will include the planting of 10 billion trees within the kingdom in the upcoming decades, the equivalent to rehabilitating roughly 40 million hectares of degraded lands, translating to a 12-fold increase from current tree covers. The move will represent more than 4 per cent of the goals of the global initiative to limit the degradation of lands and fungal habitats, and 1 per cent of the global target to plant 1 trillion trees.
The kingdom will also work to raise the percentage of protected areas to more than 30 per cent of its total land area, representing roughly 600,000 square kilometers, exceeding the current global target of 17 per cent. It will also launch initiatives to protect marine and coastal environments. The Saudi Green Initiative will also work to reduce carbon emissions by more than 4 per cent of global contributions. That will be achieved by adopting a renewable energy programme that will generate 50 per cent of the kingdom’s energy from renewables by 2030; through projects in the fields of clean hydrocarbon technologies that are estimated to eliminate more than 130 MT of carbon emissions; and by raising the rate of waste diversion from landfills to reach 94 per cent in the kingdom. Overall regional tree planting programme (with 50 billion trees) is claimed to be the largest reforestation programme in the world, twice the size of the Great Green Wall in the Sahel. The initiative also seeks to increase the share of clean energy production in the Middle East over the current 7 per cent by sharing knowledge on advanced technologies which will contribute to reducing carbon emissions resulting from hydrocarbon production in the region by more than 60 per cent. These joint efforts will aim to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions by more than 10 per cent of global contributions.