Legal Protection of Environmental Sustainability and Basic Needs Under Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030: An Analytical Doctrinal Study

Abstract

This study investigates the legal structure safeguarding the environmental sustainability and basic needs in the Saudi regulatory system and how it is consistent with the principle of sustainable development and Saudi Vision 2030 goals. The present research has a doctrinal-analytical approach with a supporting approach in normative-institutional analysis, based on the Environmental Law of 2020, the Water Law, the Waste Management Law, the Personal Status Law of 2022, the Investment Law of 2024, and supporting regulations. The results show that the Saudi framework has been significantly modernized and introduced the internationally recognized principles of prevention, precaution, polluter-pays, and intergenerational equity in a framework of an integrated regulatory system. Convergence between environmental legislation and basic-needs legislation puts into practice a multi-layered protection system harmonized with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Persistent gaps are, however, in the areas of inter-institutional coordination, specialized environmental adjudication, open environmental data, and public legal awareness. The paper proposes to apply integrated regulatory governance, based on inter-ministerial coordination, specialized adjudication, open-data infrastructures, and structured societal engagement. The study proposes a more cohesive application of two lenses, the environmental sustainability lens and the protection of basic-needs lens, into a single analytical perspective and framework, thus creating evidence-based recommendations for the modernization of regulation in the context of Vision 2030 as well as a transferable analytical map that can be applied to contexts in the Gulf and emerging-economy regions that are dealing with comparable transitions toward a more sustainable relation with the environment.