In a bid to scale up climate action in the MENA region, the Middle East Green Initiative (MGI) welcomed 11 new member countries this month, including Algeria and Lebanon.
The MGI was launched in 2021 by His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz with the aim of developing international governmental collaboration to mitigate climate change. It is the first regional alliance of its kind in the MENA region.
The first MGI Ministerial Council Session took place on 16 October in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Chaired by Abdulrahman Al-Fadley, Saudi Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture, the Session admitted new members, approved the MGI secretariat’s organisational structure and internal policies, and took other decisions to enable the launch of MGI’s implementation phase.
The Session also saw the Ministerial Council underline the role of the regional members in achieving MGI objectives.
Indeed, one of the core objectives of the initiative is to bring together regional stakeholders to collaboratively achieve a more than 60 per cent reduction in emissions from hydrocarbon production.
Another facet of the initiative is investment in the green economy.
As part of its MGI involvement, in 2022, Saudi Arabia announced the launch of the Circular Carbon Economy (CCE) Knowledge Hub to facilitate regional collaboration in CCE technologies.
Alongside these focus areas is the pledge to plant 50 billion trees across the Middle East, which it says is equivalent to restoring 200 million hectares of degraded land.
In the coming decades, a fifth (ten billion) trees will be planted within Saudi Arabia’s borders, and 40 billion will be planted across the MENA region.
According to MGI, its tree planting efforts serve a number of functions, from providing employment to local people to protecting land against flooding and dust storms. MGI notes that the economic impact of the latter is roughly US $13 billion annually.
MGI also claims the initiative will help reduce “CO2 emissions by up to 2.5% of global levels.”