Saudi Green Initiative — National Tree-Planting & Land Rehabilitation Programme

The Saudi Green Initiative (SGI) was announced in March 2021 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, part of the wider regional Middle East Green Initiative. On-ground delivery sits with the National Center for Vegetation Cover Development and Combating Desertification (NCVC), an independent government body created in 2019 under the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, headquartered in Riyadh. Official targets are to plant 10 billion trees domestically (against a regional total of 50 billion), cut emissions by 278 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year by 2030, protect 30% of land and sea as reserves, and reach net-zero emissions by 2060.

As of 31 July 2025, Saudi Arabia's environment minister reported 151 million trees planted -- roughly 1.5% of the 10-billion-tree domestic target -- and 500,000 hectares of land rehabilitated. Protected terrestrial area is reported to have grown from 4.5% to 18.1% of the Kingdom's territory, with national parks increasing from 18 to 500. All of these figures are self-reported by Saudi officials or state media (Arab News, the Saudi Press Agency); no independent third-party audit, certification body or satellite-verified count of trees or rehabilitated hectares was found in the sources reviewed.

Independent commentary raises two distinct concerns. Climate Fact Checks calculates that sustaining the full 10-billion-tree target would require roughly 1.53 billion cubic metres of treated sewage water per year -- about a quarter of the Kingdom's current desalination output -- and notes that no independent verification mechanism for tree counts or survival has been disclosed. Al Jazeera's 2021 analysis, citing researchers Yara Asi and Matthew Archer, frames the initiative as running alongside Saudi Aramco's plan to raise oil output from 12 million to 13 million barrels per day by 2027, and separately notes Aramco runs its own smaller '100 million trees by 2030' programme intended to offset only around 45 million tonnes of CO2 per year -- a small fraction of the Kingdom's overall emissions.

Funding disclosed by SGI stands at roughly $187-188 billion pledged across more than 85 initiatives as of late 2024, though no independent tracking of actual disbursement against these pledges was found. Given the roughly 1.5% delivery rate against the flagship tree target after more than four years, and the absence of independently verified tree-survival or land-rehabilitation data, this practice is best read as an ambitious, well-funded pledge at an early, largely self-reported stage of delivery.

Read the full analysis: https://www.arabnews.com/node/2610137/saudi-arabia