By John — Desalination News
The United Nations Sustainable Development Group has highlighted Saudi Arabia as a model for water security, pointing to the Kingdom’s investment in infrastructure, technology and expertise to reuse, conserve and produce water in one of the world’s hottest and driest climates. The recognition adds to a growing list of UN endorsements, following UN-Water’s earlier selection of Saudi Arabia as its SDG 6 Country Acceleration Case Study for progress on integrated water resource management.
Much of that progress traces back to the National Water Strategy launched under Vision 2030, which shifted the country’s approach from simply expanding desalination capacity to managing water more efficiently across the entire supply chain. Since the strategy’s launch, Saudi Arabia has nearly doubled its drinking water production and the capacity of its conveyance and storage systems, extended clean water access to almost the entire population, and nearly tripled the reuse of treated wastewater — building on gains already flagged in the Kingdom’s recent push on major investments and technology upgrades.
Desalination remains the backbone of that system — Saudi Arabia produces around 18 percent of the world’s desalinated water, more than any other country — but officials have increasingly framed the technology as one part of a broader strategy rather than the whole answer. Recent programmes have assessed unconventional sources including brackish water and wastewater reuse, alongside operational shifts such as the transfer of management for more than 400 desalination plants to a single operator earlier this year, and a target of reusing 70 percent of treated wastewater by 2030.
Internationally, the Kingdom has used that experience to build UN-supported partnerships aimed at helping other countries prevent drought and share technical knowledge, while preparing to host the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027. The Saudi Water Partnership Company now oversees around $12.5 billion in investment across the water supply chain, a scale officials say is intended to keep driving down the cost of desalination as the sector expands.
(Source: UN Sustainable Development Group)