Can the oil industry help address climate change? Saudi Arabia says yes.

THADIQ, AL GHAT, AND RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA- A bulldozer and a crane lift barren earth from the ground at breakneck speed as six men in white thobe gowns tied around their waists carefully stack 100-pound slabs of rock in a long, neat row.  

A bustling construction project is not uncommon in Saudi Arabia, a country in the grip of rapid economic and social change. 

But here in Thadiq, in the baking Najd desert north of Riyadh, the only structure in sight is a 4-foot stone wall. The men work in a flat, exposed, dusty expanse pockmarked with hundreds of neatly dug holes, 4 feet long and 1 foot wide, stretching to the horizon like a battlefield cemetery waiting for the fallen. 

This grand project is not the start of another gleaming skyscraper. It is something even more audacious: a future forest. 

“Greening needs effort and patience,” Abdullah al-Issa, or Abu Brahim, says as he directs the preparations for planting 30,000 saplings. “When you are doing good work, there is a lot of work to do.”

Can a desert turn green – and stay green? Can the world’s second-largest oil producer lead the fight against climate change? Saudi Arabia is saying yes to both – a bold bet whose payoff depends on places like Thadiq and individuals like Abu Brahim. 

A Saudi Johnny Appleseed, this middle-aged agricultural engineer with twinkling eyes and a constant smile started planting different saplings and seeds he had accumulated from across the kingdom in these then-barren fields a decade ago in a bid to reverse the desertification encroaching on his hometown. 

After his initial success, the Saudi government declared the 220-square-mile area the Thadiq National Park in 2018. Now, with government encouragement and funds, he has planted 170,000 trees and is preparing for the next 100,000. 

On this warm February morning, Abu Brahim has a visitor: Abdullah al-Subeihi, a conservationist and arborist from the country’s National Center for Vegetation Cover (NCVC), the government agency tasked with scaling up greening projects like this one.

“When it comes to forestation, action, not words, matter,” Mr. Subeihi says, admiring the budding red fruits of a 4-foot-tall jujube. “These stunning results are a great sign.” 

With four decades’ experience in conservation, Mr. Subeihi is a human library of the trees, shrubs, and flowers native to Saudi Arabia. Squeezing branches, pinching fruits, and gently caressing healthy green leaves, Abu Brahim and Mr. Subeihi geek out over each tree and shrub like gearheads admiring a classic car.  

Finally, they arrive at the secret to Abu Brahim’s success: a large rainwater catchment dam, one of 100 in the park. Completed in the summer of 2022, it consists of a series of low-lying stone walls that decrease in height like giant steps down into the valley floor. The design is intended to redirect and slow increasingly frequent winter floods to keep them from tearing up shrubs and saplings and to allow groundwater and aquifers to regenerate. 

Two-week-old rainwater collects in a clear lake with young acacia trees sprouting from the center. Pigeons and shrikes hop at the water’s edge, and butterflies float from shrub to shrub. Multiple desert fox and hare sightings have been reported in the park, and Riyadh picnickers have started to gather here on weekends. 

“When I started, there were only five trees in this whole area. In my children’s time, this will be a forest that they can take their children to,” Abu Brahim says, leaning his arm on a dam wall. “This is an amazing feeling,” he says, gazing at the acacia trees on the horizon. “This is the feeling of life.”

Planting billions of trees, going solar, capturing carbon from the sky, and a green hydrogen revolution – Saudi Arabia’s declared green transition sounds as fanciful as it is surprising from a fossil-fuel giant.

But few countries in the world have the deep-pocket resources and centralized decision-making like Saudi Arabia to make it happen.

After neglecting climate change action for decades, Saudi Arabia says it is embracing climate solutions and sustainability at every level. But by no means is the kingdom abandoning oil. On the contrary, it depends on oil demand to fund its ongoing economic diversification, prepare for a post-oil future, and meet its net-zero goals. 

Saudi Arabia maintains that it can green the Middle East and continue to produce oil and gas in a responsible, low-carbon fashion as the world slowly shifts away from fossil fuels.

Critics call it “greenwashing,” while some climate experts accuse Saudi Arabia of deliberately blurring the narratives around climate change solutions to blunt the campaign to phase out fossil fuels. 

Yet with billions of dollars being pumped into afforestation, green hydrogen, and carbon capture and reduction strategies – supported by research, development, and top-down climate edicts from the crown prince himself – Saudi Arabia’s green transition is in full swing in every sector. It’s a green transition funded by oil revenues. 

The Saudi Green Initiative (SGI), the brainchild of ruling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was launched by the crown prince in March 2021 and brought to an international audience of experts and diplomats by Saudi Arabia last November in a specially built domed pavilion on the sidelines of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. 

Like most of the crown prince’s moonshot plans, the Saudi Green Initiative’s goals are big, bold, and bordering on the impossible: plant 10 billion trees, push the kingdom’s energy mix to 50% renewables by 2030, cut 278 million tons of carbon emissions by the decade’s end, preserve 30% of Saudi land as protected nature reserves, and reach net zero by 2060. 

But that’s not all. Recognizing the cross-boundary impact of climate change, Saudi Arabia also announced a parallel, regionwide Middle East Green Initiative (MGI). 

Without action on greenhouse gases, the Middle East North Africa region is on pace for warming at twice the global rate, with temperatures projected to rise by 4 degrees Celsius by 2050 – along with desertification, dust storms, and the evaporation of the Persian Gulf’s fresh-water resources. 

The MGI aims to plant a staggering 50 billion trees across the Middle East, reduce 670 million tons of carbon dioxide regionwide, help neighboring states reach net-zero goals, provide clean cooking fuel for 730 million people, and make Saudi Arabia a regional hub for green hydrogen and carbon-capture technologies. 

On paper or spoken by government officials in forums, it may sound like green-friendly spin, declarations that are good for the kingdom’s image that may never be realized. 

But the Saudi crown prince’s penchant for moonshots isn’t just a matter of words……..CONTINUE READING AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR