Green group offers help to plant 450m trees in Kingdom

An international conservation group wants to help Saudi Arabia reach its goal of planting 450 million trees by 2030 to offset carbon emissions, its CEO has told Arab News.

Wildlife Alliance’s Suwanna Gauntlett also said that she wanted her organization to be on the ground training young Saudis to help realize the goal.

Speaking at the Saudi Green Initiative, which is taking place on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference, Gauntlett said: “We are a nongovernmental organization, nonprofit. Our mission is to conduct afforestation, where the forest has been denuded and to protect the forests that still exist.”

SGI plans to plant 450 million trees and rehabilitate 8 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, which would cut around 200 million tons of carbon emissions a year.

“Our wish is to be selected to help them with the implementation and to accelerate (it) because there’s not much time left until 2030,” said Gauntlett.

Wildlife Alliance also aims to help with the country’s Vision 2030 mandate to designate as much as 30 percent of Saudi Arabia’s land and sea areas as protected as reserves.

The Kingdom currently has around 17 percent under protection, which include the Royal Natural Reserves, Natural Reserves and AlUla Natural Reserves.

“I’ve seen so far a great commitment from the Saudi government and the creation of the relevant departments to get the Saudi Green Initiative done. Centers, hiring managers, creating plans, and I believe now allocating budgets,” the Gauntlett told Arab News.

“We think that everybody should get involved. So, we’re specialists, we want to share our skills and our expertise and we want to do it now.”