Saudi Arabia’s new “virtual center” of water sustainability was launched, led by its Water Authority, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, and King Abdulaziz University, and was termed a breakthrough in solving the Kingdom’s water challenges. The project emphasizes desalination technologies, renewable energy integration, and research collaboration to ensure the country’s water future.
On its face, this may seem like it’s going in the right direction. But if we peel back the glitzy headlines, it’s clear that this action is less an actual commitment to being sustainable and more of a public relations exercise. As Saudi Arabia had previously been given the 2034 World Cup, these types of declarations are crafted to make the Kingdom look beautiful and pacify the critics of its human rights, political, and environmental record.
For those advocating for Saudi Arabia to be excluded from hosting the premier FIFA tournament, the framing and timing of such movements deserve scrutiny. Rather than being a real revolution in sustainable water approaches, the center is only part of a greenwashing initiative that aims to justify the regime’s world sports aspirations.
The Politics Behind the Sustainability Drive
Saudi Arabia’s reliance on desalination plants is not new. The Kingdom already maintains some of the world’s largest desalination plants to meet its gigantic water demands, driven by a arid climate and irresponsible consumption patterns. But desalination itself is highly energy-intensive, eco-destructive, and fossil fuel-reliant—a commodity Saudi Arabia cannot help but overproduce in and pursue aggressively.
The announcement of a “virtual center” neatly foreground buzzwords like innovation, sustainability, and renewable energy. But little has been said about how this will wean the Kingdom off oil, reduce greenhouse gases, or mitigate the environmental impact of desalination brine injected into the Arabian Gulf.
Instead, the project serves a primarily symbolic function: it allows Saudi Arabia to position itself as a responsible steward of natural resources ahead of FIFA 2034. By projecting an image of responsibility and progress, the regime hopes to avoid international censure and legitimize its role as host to the world’s most-watched sporting spectacle.
Greenwashing in the Shadow of Sportswashing
To understand why this is important, we must place the water initiative in the wider context of Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing” policy. Hosting global events like boxing world championships, Formula One racing, and now the FIFA World Cup has become a central plank of the Kingdom’s soft power policy. By associating itself with the glitz of global sport, Saudi Arabia attempts to obscure its horribly dismal human rights record, ongoing restriction of free speech, and systematic silencing of political dissidents.
Environmental efforts like the water sustainability center are a spin-off of the same playbook. Just like “sportswashing” uses football to whitewash the regime’s reputation, “greenwashing” uses buzzwords about sustainability to divert attention from the Kingdom’s status as one of the world’s top oil exporters and carbonizers.
FIFA’s announcement to award Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup without an open competitive bidding process only heightens this need. By highlighting projects such as the desalination research center, Saudi Arabia is attempting to demonstrate that it has earned the right to host the tournament. But in practice, these projects are less about results and more about appearances.
Why Water Sustainability Matters for FIFA 2034
Organizing the FIFA World Cup requires vast amounts of infrastructure, ranging from stadiums to hotels to transportation systems. In Saudi Arabia, this means billions of dollars of construction, enormous water usage in desert landscapes, and increased energy consumption. Already, issues are being questioned about how the Kingdom will have the capacity to deal with such a huge volume of visitors in a country where water is limited.
The “virtual center” news release is clearly intended to assuage critics’ fears that Saudi Arabia will be able to manage these issues responsibly. But history does not lie. Past mega-projects in the Kingdom, including the futuristic “NEOM” city, have been plagued by environmental concerns, forced displacement of local communities, and secrecy. There is no reason to believe that FIFA’s World Cup will be any different.
Furthermore, desalination—the highlight of this initiative—remains a short-term solution, not a long-term one. It is energy-intensive, contributes to sea pollution, and does absolutely nothing to address the Kingdom’s water waste in agriculture and urban development. To claim that an imaginary research center will make the World Cup eco-friendly is dishonest at best and outright deceptive at worst.
Human Rights Cannot Be Ignored
Even if it were believed that Saudi Arabia was actually making genuine strides on sustainability—itself unlikely—it would also have to be held responsible under human rights for FIFA 2034. All the world’s water studies and “green” initiatives cannot compensate for the Kingdom’s reputation for handling activists, journalists, and minorities.
Opposition to the government, and even inquiry into environmental policy, will at times have critics harassed, imprisoned, or worse. Feminist activists, who struggled for basic freedoms, remain in limited constraint. Migrant workers, who will build the stadiums and infrastructure for FIFA 2034 with near certainty, remain under exploitative circumstances in spite of symbolic reform.
Such a context makes pronouncements like the water sustainability drive irrelevant. While Saudi Arabia boasts of its “innovative” desalination research, it does so to the tune of silencing voices calling for transparency and accountability regarding environmental and political matters.
The Real Alternative: Prevent Saudi Arabia from Hosting FIFA 2034
The argument is not whether Saudi Arabia may construct desalination facilities or research institutions. The question is whether a nation that employs sustainability projects as cover for image, while maintaining destructive practices domestically and internationally, has earned the right of welcoming the world’s most popular sporting event.
FIFA has an obligation to itself and the world to ensure its competitions are held in nations that prize human rights and true sustainability. Bestowing Saudi Arabia with the 2034 World Cup contradicts these principles. It signals to the world that hollow proclamations mean more than real transformation, and that spin is enough to secure worldwide acceptance.
Leaving Saudi Arabia out of hosting FIFA 2034 would send a very clear message: sustainability is not just a marketing tool, and football should not serve to clean up autocracy. It would also encourage hosts in the future to actually make real changes in environmental and social circumstances, rather than mere tokenistic ones.