Saudi Green Initiative Day: Promoting a Culture of Environmental Stewardship

Riyadh, March 27, 2025, SPA -- Saudi Arabia celebrates its second annual Saudi Green Initiative Day today, March 27, commemorating the launch of the Saudi Green Initiative (SGI) in 2021 by His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of the Higher Committee for the SGI.
SGI is a community driven initiative to steer the implementation of impactful, measurable environmental actions to improve the quality of life across Saudi Arabia, in line with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.
SGI unites environmental protection, energy transition and sustainability programs with the overarching aims of offsetting and reducing emissions, increasing afforestation and land restoration, and protecting the Kingdom’s land and sea. It leads environmental efforts with a comprehensive approach and plays a key role in regional and international collaboration towards a more sustainable future globally.
Marking the culmination of a month-long campaign, SGI Day emphasizes the importance of collective action under the theme “Promoting a culture of environmental stewardship", uniting citizens, public institutions, the private sector, and non-profits to combat the impact of environmental challenges.
Throughout March, communities across the Kingdom came together to demonstrate their shared responsibility for bringing about sustainable change. These efforts were supported by two awareness campaigns run by the SGI across its social channels.
The #GreenRamadan campaign encouraged people to showcase how they are observing Ramadan sustainably with friends and family by using the hashtag to demonstrate their efforts to reduce food waste, save electricity, conserve water, and more. On SGI Day, a dynamic live mosaic on SGI Day’s website is celebrating the thought-provoking sustainability measures that were undertaken by individuals from all walks of life to make their Ramadan more sustainable – and will continue to feature new entries beyond Ramadan.
The #PawsToChangeChallenge by SGI’s mascot Namour inspired the Saudi youth to embrace simple yet impactful sustainable actions and encouraged them to share their practices during Ramadan on social media.
SGI Day 2025 follows the significant momentum witnessed in Riyadh last December, when the Saudi Green Initiative Forum was hosted alongside the 16th session of the UNCCD “COP16 Riyadh” Conference. The forum served as a crucial platform for enhancing dialogue and exchanging insights on addressing environmental challenges and supporting green transformation pathways, with the participation of policy makers, business leaders, and experts.
With investments exceeding SAR705 billion, the initiative is actively driving over 85 initiatives across all 13 regions of the Kingdom, while making rapid progress toward achieving its key objectives. Last year, Saudi Arabia successfully connected 6.6 GW of renewable energy capacity to the grid, with a total of 44.2 GW currently under development. The Liquid Fuel Displacement Program contributes to reducing emissions, by operating four efficient natural gas power plants with a total capacity of 5.6 GW. This aligns with the Kingdom’s ambitions to achieve an optimal energy mix for electricity production by 2030.
As part of efforts to increase vegetation cover and combat desertification, 115 million trees have been planted, and 118,000 hectares of degraded land have been rehabilitated—equivalent to over 165,000 football fields, as of 2024.
Additionally, over 7,500 endangered species have successfully been rewilded through more than 10 breeding and rewilding programs, including the Arabian oryx, Arabian and sand gazelles, ibex, houbara, and cheetahs.
These efforts are a testament to the Kingdom's unwavering commitment to building a sustainable future for generations to come, while fostering a thriving and sustainable economy, further solidifying its position in the global environmental landscape.
More information on SGI Day is available at https://sgiday.com/en.
-- SPA