[00:00:00] Bridget Scanlon: I'm delighted to welcome Yoshi Wada to the podcast. Yoshi is a Professor at the Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering at KAUST, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. He started this position a couple of years ago, and then prior to that, Yoshi was Director of IIASA’s (Intl. Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR) Program, where he led strategic science development at the BNR program, managing more than a hundred, staff.
Yoshi received many awards and the most prestigious is probably the AGU Macelwane medal. He is very famous in hydrology and is very well known for his early work on global hydrologic modeling. That emphasizes global groundwater depletion, irrigation and linkages to food production.
Since arriving at KAUST, his research has expanded to integrated assessments of hydrology, climate and incorporating social and economic aspects to provide a comprehensive assessment of current and future state of water, food, energy, and ecosystem community, security. And today we're going to focus on Saudi Arabia.
I'm very interested to learn about the situation there and all of the things that are going on. So thank you so much, Yoshi, for joining me.
[00:01:34] Yoshihide Wada: Thank you very much for having me, Bridget. Very nice to be here.
[00:01:38] Bridget Scanlon: So, Yoshi, we're very keen to learn about Saudi Arabia and we all think of it as sort of a big desert,I guess it's termed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And, maybe you can give us some background on that, the population, the physiography and things that so that the listeners can get some context, for the water issues.
Thank you very much.
[00:02:00] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, so Saudi Arabia is a very big country and population growth is currently very rapid and average age of people in the country is around 28 years. So it's very young society and for the environment, it's very dry countries and climate hyperarid to arid. So, it's one of the driest regions in the world. And currently our country is focusing on economic diversification and trying to change the economic structure from oil dependent economy to more a diverse economy, including manufacturers and also renewable energies and a different type of IT service and the financial sector.
So. Yeah, a lot of things happening in Saudi Arabia and, it's quite a diverse demography. So one third of the population is, labor migrant from, a neighboring country India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and, some African countries. And the two third are the Saudi national and there's also a lot of, expert, myself that are living in the Saudi Arabia.
So yeah, so it's very, international, actually , society.
[00:03:24] Bridget Scanlon: Right. thanks, Yoshi. So yeah, Saudi Arabia, it's a very large, as you say, 2 million square kilometers. And then it’s access to coastlines on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, which I think helps with the water issues. and, the topography then I guess ranges from mountains in the West to, the desert plains, towards the East and North.
And neighboring countries are Jordan, Iraq, and, Oman and Yemen and, UAE, and, so very interesting situation. And, you mentioned the population, I guess, is about 32 million and the median age is about 28, So a pretty young population and a population growing rapidly. So very interesting situation, very water scarce.
Climate is very, as you said, hyper arid to arid. Maybe 50 to 100, 50 to 100 millimeters per year max. so it's amazing to have so many people living in such a dry country. And I think, it makes me think that, Steve Gorelick said many years ago that, maybe you can, make up for lack of water with excess energy.
And so if you have enough energy, then you can desalinate seawater, treat wastewater, do lots of different things, to try to address that shortage. So since joining KAUST, then your research has expanded from your PhD and your early research focused on global hydrologic modeling from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
And now you're expanding that to consider food security, energy security, and you have a pretty large team, including economists and others. Maybe you can describe a little bit about the work that you are doing.
[00:05:14] Yoshihide Wada: Yes. I, I actually, study economics in my undergraduate. Then also, moving towards, political economies and, political science. Then my, my master, I did two masters, one, one in environmental science. Then later I switched to hydrology and, that's where I did my PhD in, in the Netherlands.
And, then I went to, NASA, working for, satellite, observations and, data simulations and, global modeling. Then, I would say, last, several years, I have been, focusing on system science. So system science is that science that one discipline cannot find the solutions or cannot find an approach to fix because of the complex issues.
And, as you imagine that Saudi Arabia with such a rapid population growth and economic diversification with quite a harsh environment and climate, the challenge is quite complex and very large. So my team, when I came to KAUST, idea is that to establish a team that actually can tackle, the issue from, a very, interdisciplinary, multiple, disciplines.
So my hydrology's environment, in addition to those, I, I added a macroeconomy and also, energy security, food and crop agriculture areas. And also, Saudi Arabia is very, dry, dry countries, but also there is quite some, ecosystem ecology that also present in the country. So my team also dealing with, ecosystem and biodiversity in the countries.
So we try to, find those, several key, discipline together and, find some basically integrated, framework. So that, if the country is investing into, a lot of, big infrastructure, so you can imagine, Dubai, and Dubai invested a lot, for the large infrastructure.
So Saudi Arabia is following similar paths right now. Then we have to analyze. So whether there's enough, financial resources, what's the impact on the environment, whether there's enough, water resources, and, how much food that, we have to import. And, later on we will discuss about, new city.
It's called Neom. And Neom is planning to have 9 million people in the future and how to actually support those ecosystem. We have to have a very complex metrics, which my team is aiming to, provide. So, and, we need to provide a very good, narrative and, scenarios so that, we can support Saudi Arabia.
Many ministries or science tend to be still, yeah, siloed or, very, disciplinary based. So basically my team tried to, yeah, tackle those challenges and providing more holistic view, how that solution can be more efficient with a limited resources.
[00:08:29] Bridget Scanlon: Right. I think that's fascinating, Yoshi, and even in your early work, you were linking water and food production through irrigation and, and whenever we make these decisions and however we move forward, there are always tradeoffs. And oftentimes we don't acknowledge those tradeoffs. I mean, if I'm getting on a plane and going down the gangway and they talk about they're going to have sustainable aviation fuel, and they have contracts with the Midwest in the U.S. for corn production. So it may be sustainable from the energy perspective, but what about the irrigation and the water requirements and stuff? So I think it's really nice that your team then, includes so many different disciplines that you can go across the sectors to address the tradeoffs in any decision.
And then if you're okay with that, then that's great. That's good, but, many people ignore them and just, are, as you said, siloed. you mentioned, the new city of Neom, which I think is, fascinating. And, I looked it up last night on Google Maps. so it shows up and I know it's in the early stages of development.
it's close to the Red Sea and it seems to extend over a long distance. You mentioned when we talked previously that there's going to be a port and the airport and all of these different things, but so it seems to extend mainly from maybe Aqaba in Jordan. I mean, it does. near that region to the south.
Maybe you can describe a little bit about it and the vision for NEOM.
[00:10:01] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, it's a, it's a very unique concept and, it's, It's actually a straight line. It's called a line and which gonna be 170 kilometer. And this is basically as long as from east to west in Italy, and, then this 170 kilometer, length, then the building, so they're going to be two buildings side by side, and, height will be 500 meter.
So these two buildings side by side, continuing for 170 kilometer, this is where those nine million people going to be, located in the, in the regions, and, this is actually only one that, happening, but there are several others, in Neom.
So there's also, a very big port. It's called Oxagon. it's also constructed. Let's see, it's , quite, yeah, part of, a major transport, a shipment, path. In the world. So Saudi Arabia is also aiming to have a larger influence on the shipment and the transport sector. Then Octagon is trying to accommodate those economy and for the shipment, and we have also the AWA, it's in the mountain areas of the name where that the Asian Winter Olympics will be hosted in the future. And, so it's gonna be a combination of we call Giga project, in the name, it's in the,Gulf of Aqaba, bordering to the Jordan as, as you mentioned, Bridget. So it's quite a large area that, we, yeah, we, looking at and, 9 million peoples and we have to supply energy and, it's going to be, all renewable for supplying energy and the water will be mostly supplied by your desalination. And then in order to achieve that we need to build a large infrastructures. So currently if you look at the google earth engine, you can see the 170-kilometer path, the foundations in the satellite image. So it's been ongoing
[00:12:18] Bridget Scanlon: Right. yeah, it's, I mean, as you mentioned earlier on, Saudi Arabia is trying to move beyond their fossil fuel economy and then to expand and consider. So Neom is It's supposed to have a circular economy with zero carbon and totally reliant on renewable energy, and promoting sustainability. so, and, and I think it's hilarious that, the Winter Olympics in 2034 will be hosted there and it just makes you realize what you can do with a lot of energy, you can make up for water shortages, you can create artificial snow and and but you do have mountains near there and.
So, so that's going to be very interesting. So moving back to talking about water resources and we'll be talking about Neom quite a bit, I think, in different aspects. so you mentioned arid, semi arid, hyper arid. Low precipitation, low relative humidity, maybe 30%, and very high temperatures. And it seems Saudi Arabia is mostly reliant on groundwater resources.
Much of those are fossil groundwater. So recharge thousands of years ago. And so basically mining, the groundwater. so maybe you can describe that a little, Yoshi.
[00:13:45] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, so right now temperature is about 40 degree in Jeddah. And if you go to the Riyadh, that's the middle of the Saudi Arabia, temperature goes up to 47, 48 right now. So now it's hottest time. And you can imagine that with, very limited rainfall, there's a large evaporation that also happening.
And it's very challenging area for the agriculture. But,if you look at the history of the Saudi Arabia, agriculture is actually one of the key sectors that are producing the, food, mainly , wheat, livestock, wheat alfalfa and also vegetable and the fruits. And, we gonna talk about it later, but the Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia was used to be one of the largest, wheat exporter in the world. And, then, then we, we think about where the water come from and, it's all come from fossil ground waters and, If you look at the satellite image for Saudi Arabia in a central area, there's a lot of center pivot irrigation, basically we extracting water from up to a few hundred meter in the aquifer.
Because we already extracted, a lot of fossil ground water already. So that's not the exact estimate, but, one estimate from NASA saying that 80, 90 percent of the fossil ground water is already depleted in Saudi Arabia. So we have only 10, 20 percent left. And we still need to produce a lot of agriculture, which is using about 80 percent of national water consumptions.
And there's no, there's no recharge, or the most in the, in those aquifers. So it's very challenging areas, but the demand is going up as population is also growing.
[00:15:38] Bridget Scanlon: And, and thank you for the sharing that, paper by Sali, Mohamed Awa on groundwater. I thought it was very interesting and, describing that the different aquifers, Umm Er Radhuma, which is a fossil system and, which, and the shallower system, Dammam aquifer, these are considered mega aquifers, but, with limited outcrop areas.
So recharge is pretty low, localized in wadis and when you have extreme runoff, but it was interesting for me to read about, in that paper, they were emphasizing the importance of climate change and how it would impact groundwater. Well, that groundwater was recharged thousands of years ago, most of it. So I don't think climate change is going to impact the supply of groundwater. But as you mentioned, it will affect, the demand for water and bigger issues, maybe the explosive population growth, in Saudi Arabia. And so demand for water and then the importance of food security for the country.
I mean, since coming out of COVID, I think all of these countries are recognizing, that they need to have food security. And so, although it seems crazy that they were exporting wheat, but having some food security would be very valuable. And I was looking at some of the trade data, Yoshi, from a website and, $40 billion in imports and about half of that, maybe $17 or $18 billion, a year, in 2022, were agricultural products.
But it seemed you have a pretty dispersed among many different countries, two and a half billion from Brazil, US, Australia. and India. so maybe from that perspective, having it coming from many different countries, maybe that, helps to make it more resilient. But,so it's,the water, the food, water and food security, and all of course tied to energy.
It's a delicate balancing game, isn't it?
[00:17:43] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, that's right. Yeah. And, So there's a lot of effort, securing, stable, food production, and while that, meeting the demand for those growing populations. And, water resources is very scarce, so that the country does need to rely on imports. And one big event that happened recently was related to Ukraine and Russia.
So a lot of people know, but the Middle East was relying on quite a lot of cereal from those two countries. Then, obviously, the import was almost stopped, then a lot of people had to find, other sources. And a bigger issue that time was that the country didn't have any food reserve.
So, if you think about, if there's, those geopolitical events or, climate shocks. then there's hardly any sort of a storage to absorb, that type of a shocks. So now that Saudi Arabia is actually also investing into food reserve for the wheat and some major cereal, that's also one effort that they're trying to improve the food security.
And also that balancing out the food import and the production in the countries and water use for agriculture is actually, decreasing quite rapidly for Saudi Arabia if you compare the figures, 10 years ago and now, water consumption of the agriculture is coming down 30, 40 percent, lower and so that's mainly coming from reduction in the water consumption for the wheat and also livestock feed, alfalfa and the clover.
So those are quite a big reductions in the agriculture productions and shifting towards more high value crops, fruits and vegetables and some new technologies vertical farming hydroponics that's also going to support a food production so here that the improving food security is a real challenge we have to do it there's no very long time windows and, that's, and it's very much dependent on that technology.
[00:20:06] Bridget Scanlon: right, right. that's a fascinating, hadn't realized about food reserves and food storage. but it makes sense every time, if supply cannot meet demand, if we have a drought, then we store water in reservoirs or in aquifers and things to get through those lean times. So it makes sense to be storing food also.
So I was recently, talking with Maysoon Al Zubi from Jordan and you share the Disi aquifer between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. And so good agreement there between the two countries but it's interesting on the Saudi side, there are a lot of center pivot irrigation systems, so supporting irrigated agriculture there.
And then you mentioned, you're heavy, reliant on imports. And I know recently there's so much discussion these days about the Colorado River and, and, there were concerns about exporting alfalfa from Arizona, in the lower Colorado, to Saudi Arabia. So I think the current governor has, tried to, stop, some of that in one of the big farms there.
But then you also bring up the importance of technology. And so I think greenhouse farming and vertical farming are fascinating and, they can recycle a lot of water and nutrients and make it more efficient. And so I was just reading about it in Neom, in the city, Neom, that they're enlisting the help of the Dutch greenhouse company, to grow crops in the desert.
And I thought that was fascinating. I mean, the Netherlands is a really a small country, but it's about, the second larger exporter of food globally, and a lot of it is attributed to vertical farming. so, I don't know if you've done much work on that aspect or familiar with what they're discussing there, Yoshi.
[00:22:00] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, indeed, Netherlands, it's one of the largest exporter of agriculture products in Europe and, they are also heavily investing into the technologies and, Saudi Arabia, especially is now, also developing this, vertical farming and, In general, we call it controlled environment agriculture, and so we control the water use and also UVs, and also the structure of the farming systems in the in the buildings.
We can also control CO2, in the buildings to enhance the growth of the crops. And here that, mainly we looking at high value crops, so vegetables, tomato, cucumbers and eggplants, and also the fruits. And, this century that, Saudi Arabia announced that, that the grapes, we are a hundred percent self sufficient in grapes, and the people know that the dates are very popular here, and the dates obviously are 100 percent self-sufficient, but, we're also producing, quite some other, fruits, grapes, and, tomato is also, we, are exporting as well. Tomatoes that are coming from those, greenhouse that, in the control agriculture,
[00:23:27] Bridget Scanlon: right, right. I mean, not that you can control things, but it doesn't really make sense for Saudi Arabia to be exporting anything considering the virtual water embodied in the food. And so basically you're exporting water and then you're subsidizing that a lot. And,so, it's interesting, but then you have the social aspect, on those farmers and needing to make a living and stuff.
And so, it's a complex issue. so, I just recently returned from Brazil, from a conference there, and, they're talking about, they could produce more food for another billion people over the next 50 years and so I, that would be great because many countries will benefit from that and especially in these semi-arid regions.
so I think that would be important. so, thinking about, I mean, the nice thing about greenhouses and stuff is that, you can trade energy for food production and you can optimize maybe water and, and greatly reduce the water use for irrigation because you're controlling the environment.
And I hadn't really realized that you also try to control the CO2. And I guess that, sometimes people talk about increasing CO2 and, and what impact that would have on food production, naturally, in, in the future. But, it's interesting that you're controlling that. And I guess you can recycle a lot of the, the nutrients and, and so that would reduce, pollution from those.
And, and so, from a water perspective, environment perspective, it maybe helps. But, the tradeoff then is the energy. And I guess with LED lighting. That has really been transformational in greenhouse production.
[00:25:12] Yoshihide Wada: yes. In fact, water and CO2, controls and hydroponic farming, actually , the yield of those crop increasing by 20 to 30%. So it's more productive in those environments and we can also produce those vegetables and fruits all year around
[00:25:36] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I was seeing that they were also talking about perennial crops in some of those greenhouses. So it's amazing what you can do. And just to get back to storing the food, to prepare for climate shocks or geopolitical shocks, is that being stored refrigerated or have you built up much storage, in Saudi Arabia or, I don't know, does China have large storages of food to get through, is that being, are there data out there on how much food is being stored?
[00:26:10] Yoshihide Wada: Yeah, well, this is a little bit related to national food security is national security. So there's not so much data, but we analyze World Bank and FAO data. And if we can calculate, how much food is being produced and how much is consumed and also exported and imported, then you can potentially calculate sort of a net difference.
And there are some data on the food reserve, and, if you look at a global food landscape, It's really, only China that has a large food reserve that can absorb the food large shocks in the food system for a few years. And many other countries Europe, even U. S., Japan don't really have a large food reserve.
And Saudi Arabia is investing so that at least, the major cereals, wheat and cereal, those crops can be stored for one, two years. then producing , yeah, some urgent supplies in case that, there's quite uncertain how the climate change may be changing yeah, agriculture productivity in those breadbaskets, including Brazil, and also, still Russia and Ukraine, there's quite uncertainty how those yeah, situation will change.
So this is really probably needed a solution and also my own perspective is that I think the country, in the Middle East or Asia can also cooperate. So if there's a shock happens, a few years ago, pricess also went up. So, if you look at the wheat price in the commodity market went up more than 50 percent in one month.
This has quite large implications for food producers and the food consumers. And if you have the big reserve, you can absorb the price shocks. So my argument is that the country can also cooperate, sort of emergency, a food reserve, not just one country, but for the several countries or , together.
So that you can accommodate those big shocks and also the potential price changes due to, speculations, or due to supply shock.
[00:28:38] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. I think, you can afford the higher prices in Saudi Arabia, but a lot of the developing countries may be more impacted because of those price shocks. And when they store these cereal reserves, do they need to refrigerate them? Is it refrigerated storage? Okay. huh. And then you can just use it the next year and then replace that and keep, keep up that, that reserve.
so we talk about trying to get energy storage and things that. So, I guess the next aspect then we've been talking about a tradeoff between water and energy. And I was looking at the electricity production in 2022, mostly maybe 60, 40 percent from oil. And 60% from natural gas and maybe renewables are, gradually increasing. and, there's aqua power. A CWA, I presume it's an acronym, is, trying to achieve, by 2030 renewable energy goal, to provide 70% of the electricity from renewable energy. I may be incorrect in this, but so you can correct me. But I think you're trying to move in the direction then to increase renewables.
And of course, you've got great solar potential and then also wind. So maybe you can describe that a little bit, Yoshi.
[00:30:01] Yoshihide Wada: Yes. So the Saudi Arabia is aiming for net zero emission by 2060. Which is also same as in China. China is also aiming for net zero emission by 2060s. And, Europe is, a little bit more ahead. They're aiming for or even 35. For Saudi Arabia, it's , so we have about, yeah, now it's 2024.
So we have about 35 years to achieve this. And there are similar pillars, obviously, currently very much dependent on the oil and the natural gas, but already, heavily invested into solar and the wind. And, obviously there's a large potential. But the issue for the solar wind is that,it's not, 24/7, right? solar, sun goes down. Wind. Also, not always very stable, producing the energy. So we also need to invest, quite heavily on the battery, other very good battery so that we can store energy during the night. So we invest in sort of large infrastructures, not just producing the energy side, but also storing energy, especially for those new city Neom.
And another pillar is actually country currently considering, it's not yet, finally decided, but, country is also considering the nuclear power as well. So potentially planning to build a nuclear power plants for Saudi Arabia in the south. Thank you very much. In addition to wind and the solar, and obviously there's also other consideration looking at the geothermal and, some , yeah, pump storage, using big reservoirs.
Then I think much later on, and the country also aiming to utilize hydrogen, for the, yeah, for the more renewable economies and energy supply. So there are yeah, several, major transformation that are happenings. And the governance side has to be also implemented in a way that, currently there's no policy framework for hydrogen, for example, and we have to also work on a policy and the governance as well.
[00:32:26] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, that's really fascinating. I mean, solar, that makes sense. So where is most of the wind energy generated? Is that a lot near the coast or, or
[00:32:36] Yoshihide Wada: Near the Red Sea?
[00:32:38] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, right. And hydrogen is very interesting. and I, I was reading that in Neom, there was a, almost, more than an $8 billion investment in hydrogen. So basically, this is green hydrogen, so it's hydrogen made with renewable energy, and then you need water for the electrolysis, and so, based on the stoichiometry, it's just nine liters of water per kilogram of hydrogen, but then when you consider where is that water coming from? So it's going to come from desalination.
If the desalination is 50 percent efficient. so then that would double that water. And then you're going to be discharging concentrate to the Red Sea. So there are a lot of things that have to come together, to make that happen. But what I was reading, and I think what you were talking to me the other day about was that, you already have offtake of the ammonia that they would generate to transport this hydrogen. So there are agreements then with Germany and Japan and other countries, to take much of the hydrogen that they would generate. so it's very interesting.
[00:33:50] Yoshihide Wada: Yes. in fact, Saudi Arabia took a major step, in 2020 that shipped ammonia, about, 40 tons from Saudi Arabia to Japan. This was , world's fastest transport. potentially ammonia, supply chains and future hydrogen supply chains. And, so Saudi Arabia is actually leading these sectors and, I guess advantage for Saudi Arabia is that hydrogen potential production, it's, much cheaper compared to other countries.
So there is a potential and if you combine desalination capacities and hydrogen facility together, there's also efficiency gain that, we can achieve and, desalination cost is also coming down quite rapidly towards less than one dollar cubic meters, just for the producing this water now that coming down to almost half a dollar cubic meter that's, that's very much comparable to conventional water supply pricing.
So, yeah, so it's very unique challenge but also there's a lot of opportunity that, yeah, the country can work on.
[00:35:03] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And I was impressed that Saudi Arabia is looking at, is doing a lot of desalination, but it's also looking at wastewater reuse, because you've got the energy to treat that wastewater. And so, and, and much of that treated wastewater then is used for irrigation and then stormwater capture.
I often saw these conferences on rainwater harvesting, but I think under the umbrella of rainwater harvesting, they're, talking about stormwater capture and maybe creating dams, small dams along the rivers to hold the water back from intense events. So that it is an opportunity to recharge maybe some of the shallow aquifers. so I mean, in all of these things, then a portfolio of options being considered and you are fortunate, then that you have the energy and the economy to support the investments, in these things early on. And then that, hopefully there would be a good return.
And, yeah. hydrogen and, so I guess ammonia is much is more stable than hydrogen. So you wouldn't actually be export shipping the hydrogen itself, but shipping, is in the form of ammonia, and then it'd be converted back to hydrogen in Japan. so, that is, really interesting. so it seems you are developing a resilience system, with a portfolio of options for water and energy and, moving towards net zero, in the future?
[00:36:32] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, and if I give overview of the water consumption in Saudi Arabia, so it's about 80 percent coming from the fossil groundwater, that's mainly for agriculture, then 10 percent coming from the desalinations, but this is where the large expansion is expected. For next, several years. So distillation capacity going to be more than double next several years in Saudi Arabia.
Then wastewater reuse is also getting a lot of attractions in, especially in the major cities. So In Saudi Arabia, by 2030, 80 percent of the wastewater, treated wastewater will be reused in all the major cities in Saudi Arabia. That's a big target, but it's very, very important and potential water supply.
And stormwater capture is, so it's very dry country, but, we do have quite, rain events. in the wet, wet period, which is now it's starting, we had a quite intense rain last week and we could capture up to, potentially a few cubic kilometers. That's a quite a big volume of water and we do have already almost 600 reservoirs in the countries and we planning additional 1000 reservoirs.
In Saudi Arabia. And we also want to do , manage equity for recharge, using those stormwater captures. So, yeah, having, very, harsh environment, but also there's opportunity that potentially we can utilize, and so we try to harvest, those, potential for with the technology.
[00:38:20] Bridget Scanlon: impressive all of the different things that you are doing and trying to optimize and, and, and take advantage. but do you have the advantage of having cheap energy? And so that helps. And then it helps kickstart new stuff with the investments in renewable and all of those sorts of things.
And you said, 50 cents a cubic meter for desalinated water. That, that's amazing. And then you also mentioned, Yoshi, that, you're working on ecosystem aspects, and the sustainability of those. And so when you consider, a lot of these desalination plants, you are fortunate, Saudi Arabia, you have access to the Red Sea and then the Persian Gulf also.
And so you can desalinate water from both regions. But then the concentrate, which is about twice the, if you have 50%, efficiency in your desal, then the concentrate that goes back then is about twice that of the sea water that you are desalinating. And so dealing with that concentrate and considering you mentioned coral reefs in the Red Sea, and, and trying to maintain those for the resorts that are being planned along the Red Sea.
Maybe you can describe that a little bit. Yoshi.
[00:39:38] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, so country also, aiming to increase substantially the, international tourists. that's expected to support also economic diversification and national revenues. And currently, Saudi Arabia is receiving about, 25 million international tourists. And,our goal is that, increase this to about 70 million, by, 2030 and, to support this, country also constructing a lot of , another areas called Aura is a middle of the Saudi Arabia where that, country building , yeah, sort of tourist areas with the natures and restored ecosystems and, yeah, some large infrastructure to accommodate the tourists. And, this is a big pillar for the countries. And, important things also Saudi Arabia is that, while we aiming for net zero by 2060, there's still a little bit of gap that we have to fill.
Even though those renewable and new technologies coming, we still have to fill the gap. And, country, in order to respond to this, also planting, many trees. To sequester carbon as well. And this is called the Saudi green initiative and we planting 10 billion trees in the country. And this is another pillars that also supporting a transformations and however, all those infrastructure resort desalinations and the concern and also actually for the coral reef in the Red Sea areas due to high salinities that you do see quite some impact.
And, we do have to do much more investigations that, what's the, direct impact of having much larger desalination capacity in the Red Sea and the impact on, a coral reef and, marine ecosystem. That's not exactly clear causal effect between those. So my team is actually investing, investigating into it.
Because, Red Sea has higher salinity, in general compared to other seas. And recently also a temperature extreme happening in the oceans, not just the surface, but in the ocean as well. So it's called marine heat waves. That's also happening in the, let's see, affecting ecosystem. So, the heat is also going up in the land and also the ocean, both.
Affecting the ecosystems and that's important event that we have to understand. Okay. In this project.
[00:42:19] Bridget Scanlon: This project, Arura. I was trying to find out some information, but I didn't know how to spell it, so couldn't actually find it. But anyway, and maybe trying to restore some oases or something. Is that another initiative? And, and then you, you mentioned, the camel population. I don't know how many camels you have in in Saudi Arabia and that they all have their own IDs, which I thought was fascinating. So, you know where they're going.
[00:42:38] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, so, Saudi Arabia's population is about 32 million, and we have also more than 30 million camels, and we have also more than 30 million date palm trees as well.
[00:42:58] Bridget Scanlon: very interesting. And so, Yoshi, you joined KAUST a couple of years ago. Maybe you can, describe a little bit about the university, the students and, and the support and the demography of the students and of your team, there would be very interesting.
[00:43:15] Yoshihide Wada: Yes, it's still a very new university, which has a history of about 15 years. And, this was established by the King Abdullah, it's a former king of the Saudi Arabia. The idea is that, to be, established in leading scientific institute from the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, focusing on a science technology benefiting society and economies and, people, well beings and, cause it's very, diverse community.
So we have about 120 nationalities. from all over the world. My team, I have about 30 staff and, with 12 nationalities from different regions and continents. And we have very good, package for the students. So, we providing free housing. So,very good, housing, facilities, and also, very good, scholarship.
So basically, student can, yeah, really focus on the study and the PhDs. So we are a graduate university, so we don't have undergraduate, and we have three divisions, biology, environmental science, and also earth, earth science, then also computer, electric, science. So we have three divisions, very much focusing on , yeah, science technology side, and, recently we have also quite some startup happening from the universities, and,
[00:44:44] Bridget Scanlon: And, and where, where are you located, Yoshi? Are you in Riyadh or?
[00:44:49] Yoshihide Wada: yeah, so this is also another maybe unique future of the university. We are located just, next to the Red Sea. It's, called Thuwal, and, it's about one hour away from Jeddah by car.
[00:45:03] Bridget Scanlon: Interesting. yeah. And then also Saudi Arabia, they supported the students going overseas, right? And, and spending time in the U. S. and Europe and many China and other regions. So that, that's really great, so they got an opportunity to see what's happening in to improve communication. I saw this also in Brazil, they were supporting the students, spending a year overseas in their graduate work and, and really helps network and everything.
So, and then I guess they don't have fees to pay and their housing is covered. That's amazing. so that really relieves a lot of pressure on students, these days. so. I really appreciate your time and, and describing the situation over there. It's fascinating. And, it's a kind of one end member of what I think about, when you have a lot of energy, how you can use that to help with the water and the food situation and security.
But then, seeing how. Saudi Arabia is evolving. It's really fascinating. So are there many electric cars over there, Yoshi? Or what is that situation ? Are you driving an electric car these days? Are you driving a Tesla?
[00:46:20] Yoshihide Wada: I would say , it's, it's increasing and, one of my colleagues actually just, bought Tesla and so, yeah, country also shifting , EVs and, supporting company called Lucid and, we have factory actually nearby, university as well.
[00:46:39] Bridget Scanlon: You're covering all your bases, but I think what's impressive, Yoshi, and you mentioned early on that you're going into a systems approach to understand the tradeoffs ad to help the decision makers and the policy makers as they move forward so that they consider all of the different aspects, water, energy, and food, transportation, and all of these different things.
So thank you so much for your time and good luck with your work there. And, I look forward to seeing, your upcoming work and learning more in the future.
[00:47:11] Yoshihide Wada: Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunities and, yeah, looking forward to providing you more update, later.
[00:47:17] Bridget Scanlon: Right.
