Green Discourse and Growth Policy in Islam: Saudi Arabian SD Environmental Policy

Abstract

After the Second World War, especially in the first detente of the 1970s, humanity began to recognize and respond to the eco-environmental crisis. The Limitations of Growth report of the Rome Club in 1972, the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972, and Legal Principles for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987, and the 1992 Rio Declaration were human responses to the eco-environmental crisis. These responses are summarized as ‘Sustainable Development (SD)’ and ‘Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development (ESSD).’ In this situation, many green discourses have been discussed academically, and among these various green discourses, techno-centrism reflects SD the most. With this global trend, not only Islamic scholars but also Islamic and Arab countries have begun to find alternatives. However, it has been confirmed that the green discourse of Islamic society is not diversified and focused on SD, which is a core concept of techno-centrism. In this paper, I discuss the SD environmental policy of Saudi Arabia, and confirm that Saudi Arabia considers SD in the water, air, and energy policies of Saudi Vision 2030 released in 2016, although it does not directly address the SD environmental policy.