Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched two initiatives over the weekend to make Saudi Arabia a significant contributor in the global fight against climate change, the Saudi Press Agency reports.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“The Saudi Green Initiative” and “The Middle East Green Initiative” are two programs that “aim to chart a path for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the region in protecting the planet, by clearly defining an ambitious road map that rallies the region and significantly contributes to achieving global targets in confronting climate change.”
According to the SPA announcement, the Crown Prince said that “as a leading global oil producer, the Kingdom fully recognizes its share of responsibility in advancing the fight against the climate crisis. Just as the Kingdom underpinned energy markets during the oil and gas era, it is going to become a global leader in forging a greener world.”
Saudi Arabia and the region “face significant climate challenges, such as desertification, an immediate economic risk to the Kingdom and the region,” the SPA said, noting that $13 billion is currently lost due to dust storms in the region every year and that air pollution from greenhouse gases “is estimated to have shortened average Saudi life expectancy by 1.5 years.”
“We will work through The Saudi Green Initiative to raise vegetation cover, reduce carbon emissions, combat pollution & land degradation, and preserve marine life, this initiative will include a number of ambitious initiatives; most notably 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, this represents the Kingdom‘s contribution of more than (4%) in achieving the goals of the global initiative to limit the degradation of lands and fungal habitats, and (1%) of the global target to plant (1 trillion) trees,” the SPA statement said.
Saudi Arabia will “also work to raise the percentage of protected areas to more than (30%) of its total land area, representing roughly (600,000) square kilometers, exceeding the current global target of (17%), in addition to launching a number of ambitious initiatives to protect Marine and Coastal Environments.
The Saudi Green Initiative “will also work to reduce carbon emissions by more than (4%) of global contributions, through an ambitious renewable energy program that will generate (50%) of the Kingdom’s energy from renewables by 2030, and several other projects in the fields of clean hydrocarbon technologies, estimated to eliminate more than (130 MT) of carbon emissions, alongside raising the rate of waste diversion from landfills to reach 94% in the Kingdom,” according to the statement.
[For additional details, click here to read the full statement from the Saudi Press Agency]
