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Red Sea Global Launches Plant Nursery of 50 Million Mangrove Trees by 2030

The initiative closely aligns with the national objectives of the Saudi Green Initiative and RSG’s commitment to conserving and revitalizing the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast. SPA
The initiative closely aligns with the national objectives of the Saudi Green Initiative and RSG’s commitment to conserving and revitalizing the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast. SPA
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Red Sea Global Launches Plant Nursery of 50 Million Mangrove Trees by 2030

The initiative closely aligns with the national objectives of the Saudi Green Initiative and RSG’s commitment to conserving and revitalizing the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast. SPA
The initiative closely aligns with the national objectives of the Saudi Green Initiative and RSG’s commitment to conserving and revitalizing the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast. SPA

Red Sea Global (RSG) - the developer behind two of the world’s most ambitious regenerative tourism destinations, The Red Sea and Amaala - successfully opened its first mangrove nursery in Saudi Arabia. The project will support RSG’s aim to plant 50 million mangrove trees by 2030, in partnership with the National Center for Vegetation Development and Combating Desertification.

The initiative closely aligns with the national objectives of the Saudi Green Initiative and RSG’s commitment to conserving and revitalizing the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast, underpinned by an overarching ambition to deliver a 30 percent net conservation benefit by 2040.

"We hold the utmost respect for the environment in which we operate and recognize it as our most valuable asset. It is our shared obligation to not only safeguard it but also proactively enhance it wherever possible. The successful opening of our Mangrove Nursery is a testament to that unyielding dedication to preserving and rejuvenating the Red Sea coastline," said RSG Group CEO John Pagano.

"While we will continue to explore novel approaches, embrace cutting-edge methodologies, and utilize innovative technology, often nature already provides the greatest solutions. The power of mangrove forests to store carbon, manage flooding and stabilize coastlines, and provide shelter for fish and other organisms, makes them one of nature’s super ecosystems. Our Mangrove Nursery will increase the numbers of mangroves and boost biodiversity, ensuring we reach the environmental ambitions we have set ourselves." he added.

The seedlings will be cared for in the nursery for approximately eight months until they grow to 80 cm, at which point they will be carefully transplanted to designated mangrove parks within the destination. RSG’s experts chose to cultivate native mangrove species Rhizophora Mucronate (red mangrove) and Avicenna Marina (gray mangrove) to increase the chances of survival.

RSG Group Chief Environment and Sustainability Officer Raed Albasseet said: "The establishment of a sustainable mangrove ecosystem is a key part of our commitment to protect and enhance the natural environment of our destination. These trees are among the most efficient tools we have for carbon sequestration, with the capacity to absorb up to 5-10 times more carbon than other plants. Coupled with the positive impact on biodiversity, the successful cultivation of seedlings forms a central pillar in our ambition to achieve a 30 percent net conservation benefit across our destinations. I speak for the entire team when I express my pride in reaching this milestone moment for our organization.”

Mangrove nurseries must also be protected from natural threats in their own habitats such as storms, extreme high tides, grazing animals, and algae that feed on them. RSG has implemented the highest measures of protection for the nursery to minimize any harm to the seedlings.

The dedicated mangrove parks will soon form part of the guest experience, open for visitors to explore and learn more about their important role in natural ecosystems.

“The process of the cultivation and transplantation of mangrove trees is highly technical, requiring significant planning and proficiency. Since mangrove forests require water to survive, nurseries are typically located near a source of water within the intertidal zone to ensure the optimal growth of the seedlings. We need to carefully track the tide cycles to find periods of low tide and consistently monitor the weather to avoid windy days, " said Tarik Alabbasi, RSG Environmental Programs Director.

The establishment of the mangrove nursery is the latest initiative launched by RSG to protect and enhance key habitats crucial to biodiversity. Previous projects include the first-ever successful transplantation of native Doum Palm Trees, achieved earlier this year, and the establishment of pioneering floating coral nurseries to help expand the region’s coral reefs. The group also regularly conducts environmental surveys of wildlife ecosystems to track impacts and improvements, optimize its approach, and ensure it reaches its regenerative goals.

RSG recently released findings from its latest Wildlife and Ecosystem Study that builds on results of the largest ever environmental baseline survey conducted by a real-estate developer released last year, covering 250 km of coastline across The Red Sea and Amaala destination areas.

The Red Sea destination is on track to welcome its first guests this year, when the international airport and the first hotels will open. Amaala will be opened to visitors soon after in 2024.

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Varieties

Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
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Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)

The world knew Jimmy Carter as a president and humanitarian, but he also was a woodworker, painter and poet, creating a body of artistic work that reflects deeply personal views of the global community — and himself.
His portfolio illuminates his closest relationships, his spartan sensibilities and his place in the evolution of American race relations. And it continues to improve the finances of The Carter Center, his enduring legacy, The Associated Press said.
Creating art provided “the rare opportunity for privacy” in his otherwise public life, Carter said. “These times of solitude are like being in another very pleasant world.”
‘One of the best gifts of my life' Mourners at Carter’s hometown funeral will see the altar cross he carved in maple and collection plates he turned on his lathe. Great-grandchildren in the front pews at Maranatha Baptist Church slept as infants in cradles he fashioned.
The former president measured himself a “fairly proficient” craftsman. Chris Bagby, an Atlanta woodworker whose shop Carter frequented, elevated that assessment to “rather accomplished.”
Carter gleaned the basics on his father’s farm, where the Great Depression meant being a jack-of-all-trades. He learned more in shop class and with Future Farmers of America. “I made a miniature of the White House,” he recalled, insisting it was not about his ambitions.
During his Navy years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter chose unfurnished military housing to stretch his $300 monthly wage, and he built their furniture himself in a shop on base.
As president, Carter nurtured woodworking rather than his golf game, spending hours in a wood shop at Camp David to make small presents for family and friends. And when he left the White House, West Wing aides and Cabinet members pooled money for a shopping spree at Sears, Roebuck & Co. so he could finally assemble a full-scale home woodshop.
“One of the best gifts of my life,” Carter said.
Working in their converted garage, he previewed decades of Habitat for Humanity work by refurbishing their one-story house in Plains. He also improved his fine woodworking skills, joining wood without nails or screws. He also bought Japanese carving tools, and fashioned a chess set later owned by a Saudi prince.
Not just any customer Carter frequented Atlanta’s Highland Woodworking, a shop replete with a library of how-to books and hard-to-find tools, and recruited the world’s preeminent handmade furniture maker, Tage Frid, as an instructor, Bagby said.
Still hanging near the store entrance is a picture of Frid, who died in 2004, teaching students including a smiling former president at the front of the class.
“He was like a regular customer,” Bagby said, other than the “Secret Service agents who came with him.”
Carter built four ladder-back chairs out of hickory in 1983, and Sotheby’s auctioned them for $21,000 each at the time, the first of many sales of Carter paintings and furniture that raised millions to benefit The Carter Center.
It was rarely about the money, though. Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who would have the Carters over to her home in Plains, recalled seeing the former president carrying out one of her chairs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘It’s broken. I’m going to take it home and fix it.’”
He was at her back door at 7:30 the next morning, holding her repaired chair.
Carter compared woodworking to the results of his labor as a Navy engineer, or as a boy on the farm: “I like to see what I have done, what I have made.”
‘No special talent,' but his paintings drive auctions Carter employed a folk-art style as a late-in-life amateur painter and claimed “no special talent,” but a 2020 Carter Center auction drew $340,000 for his painting titled “Cardinals," and his oil-on-canvas of an eagle sold for $225,000 in 2023, months after he entered hospice care.
Carter’s work hangs throughout the center’s campus. A room where he met with dignitaries is encircled with birds he painted after he and Rosalynn took on bird watching as a hobby.
Near the executive offices are a self-portrait and a painting of Rosalynn in their early post-presidential years, hanging across from a trio of Andy Warhol prints showing Carter in office.
Carter’s earliest years predominate, with boyhood farm scenes and portraits of influential figures like his father James Earl Carter Sr., whose death in 1953 led him to abandon a Navy career and eventually enter politics in Georgia.
Some of his subjects, including both of his parents, are looking away. Carter's likeness of his mother shows “Miss Lillian” as a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India. Jason Carter said the piece was particularly meaningful to his grandfather, who lost reelection at a relatively youthful 56.
“When he got out of the White House, she was standing there saying, ’Well, I turned 70 in the Peace Corps. What are you going to do?” Jason Carter said.
One Carter subject who meets his gaze is a young Rosalynn — they married when she was 18 and he was 21. He described her as “remarkably beautiful, almost painfully shy, obviously intelligent, and yet unrestrained in our discussions.”
Another who doesn’t look away is Rachel Clark, a Black sharecropper who had hosted the future president after they worked in the fields. “Except for my parents, Rachel Clark was the person closest to me,” Carter wrote of his childhood.
'Just a word of praise' Carter wrote more than 30 books — even a novel — but was most introspective in poetry.
On his first real recognition of Jim Crow segregation: “A silent line was drawn between friend and friend, race and race.”
On his Cold War submarine’s delicate dance with enemies: “We wanted them to understand ... to share our love of solitude ... the peace we yearned to keep.”
Rosalynn’s smile, he gushed, silenced the birds, “or may be I failed to hear their song.”
Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”
Only when he brought his own sons to visit his dying father did he “put aside the past resentments of the boy” and see “the father who will never cease to be alive in me.”