Comprehensive Regeneration of AlUla’s Cultural Oasis is an Emerging Blueprint for Sustainable Development

Our planet faces an uncertain future. People’s relationship with the natural environment continues to have a profound impact on the world around us.

In northwest Arabia, an approach has been developed that is reshaping how communities share their environment with nature. This concept of comprehensive – and responsible – regeneration is having an impact on how AlUla, and Saudi Arabia, are rising to meet today’s most pressing challenges.

In AlUla, comprehensive regeneration is driving economic development for the local community, while simultaneously prioritising the conservation and protection of the environment – rejuvenating the natural world while reviving our urban sites and cultural landmarks to exist side by side.

Connecting sustainability and growth is the essence of our work at The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU); it is reflective of the destination we are developing, filled with ancient wisdom and unlimited potential for future growth.

It ensures we restore natural habitats for native flora and fauna, celebrate heritage, and deliver the infrastructure and opportunities that will improve people’s lives.

It is within AlUla’s Cultural Oasis that we can see most clearly how comprehensive regeneration can breathe new life into an area once in decline – harmoniously reconnecting people to nature.

A 9km expanse of land that is being fully rejuvenated in line with the aims of the Saudi Green Initiative, the Cultural Oasis project is a centrepiece of RCU’s goal to regenerate AlUla as a global destination for natural and cultural heritage, with agriculture championed as an agent of conservation and community.

Working with our partners at IUCN ( International Union for Conservation of Nature), RCU recently released a report that outlines our comprehensive regeneration goals and the critical need for action to protect, promote, and preserve under-threat natural environments and critically endangered species.

Titled ‘Comprehensive Regeneration: The AlUla Approach to Sustainable Development’, it outlines a set of principles and approaches built around the goal of revitalising not only the landscape, but how people and societies interact with their surroundings. They are:

1. Environment and heritage safeguarding

2. Sustainable settlement patterns

3. Development, growth and activation

4. Resilient infrastructure

The AlUla Cultural Oasis was previously a collection of agricultural plots in decline, facing myriad problems exacerbated by a depleted water table, poor agri-economic practices, and various economic hardships that blighted the farming sector. As a result, 85% of the oasis was neglected.

Today, through coordinated efforts with global experts and the community, AlUla’s Cultural Oasis is being revitalised as a home to sustainably run eco-gardens and farms, with abundant palm and banana trees offering fresh produce and ample shade for community activities and events.

RCU’s work to deliver its comprehensive regeneration goals is charting a path for the revival of the Cultural Oasis’; encouraging local farmers and landowners to return to the area, stimulating a renewed impetus and desire to restore the land to its former productivity. To this effect, we have launched multiple initiatives:

• Developing an efficient irrigation system and sustainable water management techniques to grow and sustain new crops
• Improving the agricultural profitability of farms and increasing farmers’ income through a range of complementary tourist-focused activities
• Raising awareness among residents and visitors of the variety of top-quality and sustainably grown products available at local farms in the oasis

RCU recognised that farmland and agriculture acts as an enabler, bringing together communities to share in a deep connection to their history through the land that sustained their ancestors.

Rehabilitating the natural heritage of the Cultural Oasis has also started to encourage people back to the area for leisure activities – reclaiming a vital link to AlUla’s past as a lush haven, rich in produce, with unique and deeply-held traditions.

Cooperation between people and nature across the Cultural Oasis is creating a thriving area distinct in character. It is reviving its significant historic, social, and symbolic value for the community and reaffirming its impressive ecological and economic importance for the future.

As our restoration and replenishment efforts continue, the Cultural Oasis acts as a key milestone in the realisation of RCU’s comprehensive regeneration goals, with numerous lessons to learn from and many successes to emulate as our AlUla journey continues.