Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the “Green Saudi Initiative” and the “Green Middle East”, aimed at planting 50 billion trees, making the project the largest in history.
MBS talks about the new project with a tone of a successful person who finished the NEOM and The Line projects, despite his blatant failure and the deterioration of living conditions in villages and regions in Saudi Arabia
The green initiative announced by MBS aims to plant 10 billion trees in Saudi Arabia, while planting the other 40 billion trees in other countries embrace, to turn the desert into green, reduce carbon emissions, and combat pollution and land degradation, which will inevitably reduce the Kingdom's dependence on oil revenues and improve the lives of citizens, in accordance with Vision 2030.
Greater Obstacles
The official Saudi Press Agency said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had discussed the initiative with the Emir of the State of Kuwait Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Burhan, head of the Sudanese Transitional Sovereign Council. The project will be carried out in cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council, and with neighbour countries of the Middle East in general.”
Nevertheless, there are challenges that the initiative without discussing its solutions, which are:
Water Scarcity
Water scarcity is the biggest obstacle to MBS’s idea since Saudi Arabia depends on desalinating salty water into normal water, which covers only 60% of the country’s needs. The data of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture in Saudi Arabia indicated that “KSA has a limited reserve stock of non-renewable exploitable groundwater and very low re-compensation rates.” The data also indicated that the agricultural sector alone consumes 84%of the total demand for water, and 90% of the non-renewable water resources.
The data also indicated a lack of rainwater, on which many villages depend, due to the failure to extend water networks to these villages.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, the desalination process of sea water is very costly for the Saudi economy.
For the success of a project, the means to achieve its goals must be met, and while there is a huge project for the development of water resources in Saudi Arabia, MBS should have begun with this project before planting trees in the Middle East. Therefore, this project seems to be media propaganda to cover up the failure of MBS in other projects.
