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Saudi Arabia Unveils Roadmap to Reach its 10 Bln Tree Target

A woman walks past the entrance of the convention center before the opening session of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, a UN-organized conference hosted in the Saudi capital Riyadh, on October 8, 2023. (AFP)
A woman walks past the entrance of the convention center before the opening session of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, a UN-organized conference hosted in the Saudi capital Riyadh, on October 8, 2023. (AFP)
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Saudi Arabia Unveils Roadmap to Reach its 10 Bln Tree Target

A woman walks past the entrance of the convention center before the opening session of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, a UN-organized conference hosted in the Saudi capital Riyadh, on October 8, 2023. (AFP)
A woman walks past the entrance of the convention center before the opening session of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, a UN-organized conference hosted in the Saudi capital Riyadh, on October 8, 2023. (AFP)

Saudi Arabia announced on Monday a roadmap to achieve its ambitious greening target of growing 10 billion trees under the Saudi Green Initiative, a project spearheaded by Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of the Higher Committee for the Saudi Green Initiative.

The announcement reflects the Kingdom's commitment to addressing the environmental challenges it faces and to improving the quality of life of its citizens through the long-term economic and social benefits that will also be unlocked by the planting efforts.

The roadmap was announced at the second annual MENA Climate Week that is being held in Saudi Arabia from October 8-12.

The roadmap strategically lays out a plan for Saudi Arabia’s habitat zones to achieve the maximum potential vegetation cover. Additionally, it considers zones such as cities, highways and greenbelts to ensure that trees are planted where they can deliver ecosystem services that benefit the health and wellbeing of Saudi residents, the majority of whom live in urban areas.

City centers are projected to benefit from increased tree canopy cover which will reduce temperatures by at least 2.2℃ and improve air quality.

Extreme heat and ambient air pollution are some of the most prevalent environmental hazards affecting urban residents globally and are associated with a range of non-communicable diseases, such as respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.

Reduced CO2 levels is an anticipated benefit of increased tree plantation and green spaces in cities.

Over the course of implementation, jobs will be created Kingdom-wide to assist with efforts including tree growing, seed collection, landscape preparation and maintenance, development of urban water reuse networks, the creation of new parks and protected areas, and pioneering sustainability innovations.

Saudi Arabia’s tree planting target is one of the highest amongst any greening program globally. The Kingdom faces some of the most challenging natural conditions with rainfall, arable land mass, and forest area all below the global average.

The 10 billion tree target was originally announced as being equivalent to rehabilitating 40 million hectares of land. In the process of conducting the study, the target has been revised to 74.8 million hectares.

Planting 10 billion trees amounts to 1% of the global greening target and 20% of the Middle East Green Initiative’s afforestation target of planting 50 billion trees across the Middle East. Forty-one million trees have already been planted in Saudi Arabia between 2017 to 2023.

The roadmap is the outcome of a two-year in-depth feasibility study conducted by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA) and the National Center for Vegetation Development and Combating Desertification (NCVC). The study was undertaken in collaboration with renowned multidisciplinary global and local experts.

The objective of the study was not only to make the 10 billion target achievable but to incorporate sustainable irrigation methods into the planting process and ensure that the trees and shrubs selected are compatible with the Kingdom’s native varieties and suitable to the selected environment.

Over 1,150 field surveys were conducted across Saudi Arabia as part of the study, including geospatial suitability analysis for vegetation cover, based on environmental conditions including soil, water, temperature, wind and elevation. The study included a thorough assessment of all possible sectoral domains in the Kingdom, leveraging science-based recommendations and technology.

The chosen roadmap will be implemented in two phases. The first, extending between 2024 and 2030, will focus on the environmental domain, taking a nature-based approach. From 2030 onwards, phase two will be implemented incorporating a fully comprehensive approach with the greatest level of human intervention.

The Kingdom is home to a rich diversity of over 2,000 species of flora spread across a variety of habitat zones including mangroves, inland marshes, mountain forests, rangelands, national parks and valleys. By 2030, over 600 million trees are expected to be planted.

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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo

African elephants are Earth's largest land animals, remarkable mammals that are very intelligent and highly social. They also are in peril. Fresh evidence of this comes in a study that documents alarming population declines at numerous sites across the continent over about a half century.

Researchers unveiled on Monday what they called the most comprehensive assessment of the status of the two African elephant species - the savanna elephant and forest elephant - using data on population surveys conducted at 475 sites in 37 countries from 1964 through 2016.

The savanna elephant populations fell by about 70% on average at the surveyed sites and the forest elephant populations dropped by about 90% on average at the surveyed sites, with poaching and habitat loss the main drivers. All told, there was a 77% population decrease on average at the various surveyed sites, spanning both species, Reuters reported.

Elephants vanished at some sites while their populations increased in other places thanks to conservation efforts.

"A lot of the lost populations won't come back, and many low-density populations face continued pressures. We likely will lose more populations going forward," said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University professor of wildlife conservation and chair of the scientific board of the conservation group Save the Elephants, who helped lead the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Poaching typically involves people killing elephants for their tusks, which are sold illegally on an international black market driven mostly by ivory demand in China and other parts of Asia. Agricultural expansion is the top factor in habitat loss.

The forest elephant population is estimated to be about a third that of savanna elephants. Poaching has affected forest elephants disproportionately and has ravaged populations of both species in northern and eastern Africa.

"We have lost a number of elephant populations across many countries, but the northern Sahel region of Africa - for example in Mali, Chad and Nigeria - has been particularly hard hit. High pressure and limited protection have culminated in populations being extirpated," Wittemyer said.

But in southern Africa, elephant populations rose at 42% of the surveyed sites.

"We have seen real success in a number of places across Africa, but particularly in southern Africa, with strong growth in populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For populations showing positive trends, we have had active stewardship and management by the governments or outside groups that have taken on a management role," Wittemyer said.

The study did not track a continent-wide population tally because the various surveys employed different methodologies over different time frames to estimate local elephant population density, making a unified head count impossible. Instead, it assessed population trends at each of the surveyed sites.

A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period. It remains the most recent comprehensive continent-wide estimate.

"The loss of large mammals is a significant ecological issue for Africa and the planet," said conservation ecologist and study co-author Dave Balfour, a research associate in the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The world's third extant elephant species, the slightly smaller Asian elephant, faces its own population crisis, with similar factors at play as in Africa.

Of African elephants, Wittemyer said, "While the trends are not good, it is important to recognize the successes we have had and continue to have. Learning how and where we can be successful in conserving elephants is as important as recognizing the severity of the decline they have experienced."

Wittemyer added of these elephants: "Not only one of the most sentient and intelligent species we share the planet with, but also an incredibly important part of ecosystems in Africa that structures the balance between forest and grasslands, serves as a critical disperser of seeds, and is a species on which a multitude of other species depend on for survival."