From giga projects to giving back: Mujtaba Ali Hashmi on Saudi Arabia's test

Saudi Arabia's landscapes include coral reefs along the Red Sea, juniper slopes in Asir and two and a half million date palms in the Al-Ahsa oasis, writes Mujtaba Ali Hashmi, and for centuries the land fed and sheltered its people ¹. The Al-Ahsa oasis is a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 2018 ⁵. Tourism is now changing the scale of that relationship.

Growth and its pressures

Hashmi cites Ministry of Tourism data putting visitors at an estimated 122 million in 2025, a preliminary figure, and a target of 150 million a year by 2030 ^{1 2}. Growth brings jobs and pride, he writes, but also pressure on water, reefs and local communities. He separates sustainability, doing less harm, from regeneration, giving back ¹.

A target is a promise

His example is Red Sea Global, which has set a target of a 30% net conservation gain at The Red Sea and AMAALA by 2040 and has published the model behind it; the model suggests that ending fishing in the most protected zones could more than double reef fish populations ^{1 3 4}. Hashmi's point is the status of such numbers: a target, he writes, is "a promise, not proof" ¹.

The auditor's three questions

He looks for three things: a published baseline, independent verification, and a fair share of value for local people. Without them, he argues, regeneration remains a slogan; with them, it becomes a way of operating ¹. If its new luxury leaves reefs, mountains and communities richer than it found them, Saudi Arabia could lead the regenerative luxury movement ¹.

Our context

Hashmi's three questions are close to the evidence scale we use across the site, explained in how we read regeneration claims, where a target is an aspiration until a baseline and verification exist. Our AlUla profile and our feature on heritage at landscape scale apply the same test to one of the country's largest programmes.