Hamad Majdi Alkharraa
Hamad.M.Alkharraa@gmail.com
Legal Innovations for Desert Governance in Saudi Arabia:
From Formal UNCCD Compliance to Enforceable Ecological Governance
Abstract. Desertification has been among the gravest governance issues to the environment especially in the Rub al Khali desert and the neighboring desert lands in Saudi Arabia. The question in this research is to what extent Saudi Arabia has already implemented its duties as laid down in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) into concrete domestic rules governing deserts, and what laws would need to be changed to shift the normative correspondence to actual ecological performance. The research is methodologically oriented to the doctrinal and law-and-policy approach, which involves the analysis of the treaty, the discussion of the Saudi environmental laws and executive regulations, and a specific comparative commentary on the anti-desertification system in China. According to the research, Saudi Arabia has made significant formal alignment with the UNCCD by implementing the Vision 2030, the Saudi Green Initiative, expansion of the protected areas, ecological restoration goals, and the institutional nature of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA) and the National Center of Vegetation Cover Development and Desertification Combat (NCVC). But formal conformity is but a partway measure of efficiency. The existing framework still has three structural vulnerabilities namely lack of integration of implementation among the agencies, lack of local implementation and monitoring and inadequate regional legal coordination of transboundary drylands. A comparison to China shows that over time monitoring, and adaptability of implementation, and greater involvement of subnational is valuable, and also shows the weaknesses of imported hyper-arid locations as well. The research then ends with a legal reform agenda to include the statutory monitoring responsibilities, delegation of enforcement responsibilities, a GCC desertification protocol, land-restoration reporting responsibilities, and controlled siting of renewable-energy in non-arable desert areas. Governance of Saudi desert can thus be perceived not as a failed implementation experience, but as an unfulfilled journey of the treaty adherence to the rule-of-law ecological governance.
Keywords: Desertification; Saudi Arabia; UNCCD; Rub’ al Khali; Vision 2030; Environmental Law; Land Degradation Neutrality; GCC cooperation
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