Saudi Arabia working hard to reverse land degradation and desertification, says official

ROME: Saudi Arabia is working hard to reverse land degradation, and calls on the international community to commit to the battle against desertification, an official from the Kingdom said on Thursday during an event at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome.

Mohammed Al-Ghamdi, the country’s permanent representative to the FAO, said the Kingdom is committed to the restoration of land through its Saudi Green and Middle East Green initiatives, one of the aims of which is to rehabilitate 200 million hectares. Riyadh will also host the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s COP 16 summit in Riyadh from Dec. 2 to 13 this year.

“Saudi Arabia has taken up the challenge of avoiding, restoring and reversing the process of land degradation,” Al-Ghamdi said in Rome as he urged global participation at COP 16.

As the world grapples with increasing degradation of land and the effects this has on food security and climate change, he said the summit in Riyadh offers a critical opportunity for nations to commit to collaborative action and ambitious restoration targets.

Warning of already alarming global levels of land degradation, Zhimin Wu, director of the FAO’s Forestry Division, said a third of agricultural land has already been degraded by human activities.

Raja Omar, an adviser at the National Center for Vegetation Cover in Saudi Arabia, outlined the Kingdom’s comprehensive approach to the restoration of diverse landscapes, from rangelands to mangroves, and stressed the importance of ensuring such efforts are sustainable in the long term.