Saudi Arabia promotes the Saudi Green Initiatives (SGI) as a bold response to climate change, built on reforestation, land rehabilitation, and biodiversity protection. Officials highlight millions of trees planted, hectares restored, and public awareness campaigns. However, behind their green promises lies a troubling reality. Environmental policy in Saudi Arabia has imposed severe costs on local communities, particularly Indigenous tribes and marginalized residents displaced in the name of sustainability.
In the kingdom, community leadership or grassroots movements do not give rise to environmental action. It is strictly regulated by the state, which also limits autonomous involvement. As a result, even when projects damage their homes and means of subsistence, people impacted by environmental and development projects have no real means of protesting, negotiating, or demanding responsibility.
The most obvious example is the NEOM megaproject in the Tabuk area, which is marketed by authorities as a cutting-edge eco-city that supports the biodiversity and land restoration objectives of the SGI. The Indigenous Huwaitat tribe has been forcibly uprooted from their ancient grounds in the Red Sea as a result of NEOM since 2020. Authorities have punished peaceful resistance with arrest, decades-long prison sentences, and death penalties under counterterrorism charges, turning a flagship environmental project into a symbol of repression and erasure, as reported by ECDHR. By 2023, the Saudi government says it has moved almost 6,300 individuals from 1.442 families. According to independent human rights organizations, since 2020, up to 20,000 people of the Huwaitat tribe have been threatened with expulsion from thirteen communities.
These relocations did not occur voluntarily; authorities used coercion, arbitrary arrest, intimidation, and violence against residents who resisted. In 2020, security forces killed Adbdul rahim al Huwaitti after he publicly opposed the evictions, as reported by Al Jazeera. Authorities detained dozens of protesters or sentenced them to lengthy prison terms for protesting the loss of their homes. Officials offered compensation unevenly and without meaningful consultation, violating deliberate standards on housing rights and Indigenous protections.
Across the country, Vision 2030 projects tied to sustainability goals have transformed cities through mass demolitions. In Jeddah alone, authorities demolished more than sixty neighborhoods and displaced over half a million residents. Migrant communities suffered disproportionately because officials denied them fair compensation and legal protection. Authorities often carried out evictions with little notice, leaving families without shelter or legal remedies.
The SGI reports achievements such as planting more than one hundred thirty-seven million trees and restoring over three hundred ten thousand hectares of land. These reports excluded any mention of displacement or community harm. Officials frame relocation as beneficial and fairly compensated, yet human rights organizations and affected residents strongly dispute these claims. When authorities measure environmental progress only in trees and land, they erase the human costs.
Rural, Bedouin, and coastal communities already endure extreme heat, flooding, and water scarcity. Instead of empowering these communities as partners in climate resilience, the state removes them to make space for prestige projects designed to attract foreign investment and global recognition.
Climate actions that silence communities, criminalize opposition, and remove Indigenous populations cannot achieve sustainability. Saudi Arabia’s environmental agenda risks becoming a symbol of greenwashing that hides displacements, repression, and inequality. Human rights must be respected for environmental justice, and communities’ rights to stay on their property, take part in decision-making, and speak freely must be safeguarded for real sustainability.
