Authorities in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh launched the Green Riyadh project, one of four giga-projects for the city and region: an ambitious tree-planting strategy to “greenify” many parts of the Kingdom’s largest city, according to a report from the Saudi Gazette.
The project started off in the Al-Aziziyah district with the planting of 623,000 trees and bushes at 54 parks, 61 schools, 121 mosques, and 78 parking sites, as well as 176 kilometers of roads and walkways in the neighborhood.
The program aims at planting trees in more than 120 residential neighborhoods, where designs have been developed for this purpose based on global environmental standards that take into consideration the local environment. Green Riyadh contributes to realizing the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative of planting 10 billion trees across Saudi Arabia.
The local effort is part of a wider bid by Saudi Arabia to reduce carbon emissions and increase green spaces with a number of initiatives aimed at reforestation and afforestation.
One of the key initiatives is the “Green Saudi” program, which was launched in 2018 by the Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water, and Agriculture. The program aims to plant 10 billion trees across the Kingdom by 2030, covering an area of approximately 50,000 square kilometers. To achieve this goal, the government has implemented a number of measures, including the distribution of seedlings to schools, hospitals, and other public institutions, as well as the establishment of tree nurseries and the development of afforestation projects in urban areas.
The “Green Riyadh” program, which was launched in 2019, aims to plant 1 million trees in the capital city of Riyadh alone. Similarly, the “Green Jeddah” program, which was launched in 2020, aims to plant 500,000 trees in the city of Jeddah.
The Saudi government has also partnered with a number of private sector companies and organizations to promote reforestation and afforestation in the Kingdom. As an example, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) has launched a number of initiatives aimed at increasing the country’s green cover, including the “Plant a Million Trees” campaign, which aims to plant 1 million trees in Saudi Arabia over the next five years.
