• The following words and phrases - wherever they appear in this Law - shall have the meanings specified next to each, unless the context requires otherwise:

• Law: Environmental Law.

• Regulations: Executive regulations of the Law.

• Ministry: Ministry of Environment, Water, and Agriculture.

• Minister: Minister of Environment, Water, and Agriculture.

• Competent Authority: The Ministry, or any of the national centers for the environment sector, or the General Authority for the Conservation of Coral Reefs and Turtles in the Red Sea, each according to its jurisdiction, and as determined by the regulations.

• Supervisory Authority: Any government entity authorized by law to supervise a developmental sector, and is responsible for issuing licenses to conduct activities under its supervision.

• Person: Any natural or legal person, whether public or private.

• Permit: A document granted by the competent authority to a person before commencing any activity that has an environmental impact.

• License: A document granted by the competent authority to a person permitting them to conduct an environmental activity.

• Permit Holder: A person who has obtained a permit.

• License Holder: A person who has obtained a license.

• Environmental Activity: Any operational or technical activity related to the environment sector.

• Environmental Impact: Any negative or positive change affecting the environment as a result of conducting any activity.

• Environment / Environmental Mediums: Everything surrounding humans, animals, plants, or any living organism; including water, air, land, soil, living organisms, biodiversity, gases in the atmosphere, water bodies, and what these mediums contain of inanimate objects, various forms of energy, habitats, natural processes, and their interactions.

• Environment Sector: Includes environmental mediums, activities, and programs related to them, aimed at ensuring the protection and safety of the environment, and developing environmental mediums to ensure their sustainability and protection from any source of pollution.

• Environmental Considerations: All that must be taken into account - when planning any project - from systems, decisions, strategies, and environmental programs.

• Environmental Principles: Principles recognized in international organizations and agreements related to the environment, aimed at protecting the environment. 

• Natural Resources: All living and non-living materials - existing in nature - and their products, which are exploited or invested by humans directly, such as air, water, land, soil, biodiversity, and geological formations of environmental value.

• Biodiversity: The variety of species of plants, animals, or microorganisms and their numbers, and the variation among these species.

• Wild Organisms: Any living or dead organism, scientifically belonging to animal or plant groups, excluding humans and domesticated or tame organisms.

• Habitats: Locations where wild organisms live, grow, or reproduce naturally and in a connected and integrated manner with the surrounding conditions.

• Wildlife: Wild plant and animal organisms and their habitats. 

• Protected Areas: Land, marine, or coastal sites designated by the competent authority, allocated for the protection and development of wild organisms.

• Derivative: Anything extracted from wild organisms, whether naturally or unnaturally.

• Product: Any part of any wild organism, whether partially or fully manufactured or unmanufactured.

• Biological Control Methods: The use of biological systems or living organisms or their derivatives to reduce, control, and combat pests and plant diseases.

• Vegetation Cover: Natural plants whether they are grasses, shrubs, or trees.

• Vegetation Land: All state-owned lands containing wild plants and similar. This includes: pastures, forests, national and wilderness parks, geological areas, wetlands, flat areas, sandy areas (dunes), mountainous areas, valleys, coastal areas, and islands.

• Forests: A plant community consisting of one or several species of trees, shrubs, or herbaceous plants in a pure state, or mixed with a tree density of not less than (10%) of the site area, whether this community is natural or cultivated.

• Pastures: Lands covered - wholly or partially - with native or non-native plants growing naturally, varying in their suitability for grazing and feeding animals, whether they are grasses, shrubs, or trees, including: degraded pastures that have been replanted with forage plants, and are on lands not utilized for agriculture, accommodation, or public utilities.

• Trees: Any tree with a woody or aerial trunk, rising from the ground (1.5) meters or more, whether growing naturally or cultivated.

• Shrubs: Any natural or cultivated plant growing, with a height from half a meter to less than (1.5) meters.

• National and Wilderness Parks: Sites within vegetation land with unique environmental or geological characteristics developed for their conservation and to encourage eco-tourism.

• Marine and Coastal Environment: Marine areas, coastal areas, and islands or any component of their natural components, whether they are trees, shrubs, plants, grasses, algae, coral reefs, marine or microscopic organisms, and similar.

• Water Resources: Renewable and non-renewable surface and groundwater, including: water from wells, springs, and reservoirs, and rainwater.

• Water Bodies: Accumulations of water on the surface of the earth or in its depths, including oceans, seas, lakes, ponds, wetlands, and other geographical components where water moves from one place to another.

• Environmental Protection: The preservation of the environment, including: preventing pollution, mitigating its severity, reducing environmental degradation, and ensuring sustainable development; through adherence to standards, criteria, and preventive or remedial procedures related to the environment in accordance with the provisions of the Law and regulations.

• Air Quality: The characteristics that define the state of the air, which are evaluated based on the standards and criteria set by the competent authority for the protection of the environment and human health.

• Environmental Pollution: The presence of one or more substances or factors in certain quantities or qualities for a period of time; which directly or indirectly leads to harm to the environment.

• Liquid Components: Any liquid or oily substance that causes pollution to environmental mediums.

• Pollutants: Any solid, liquid, gaseous substance, smoke, vapor, emissions, noise, light, or any other natural or human impact that directly or indirectly leads to environmental pollution or degradation. 

• Emissions: The release of gases or particulate matter into the air from a specific source.

• Environmental Standards: Limits or concentrations of pollutants or emissions that are not allowed to be exceeded; to ensure a level of quality for environmental mediums. 

• Hazardous Waste: Waste that poses a danger to the environment and its components and human health, retaining hazardous or infectious properties, such as: high toxicity or explosiveness or reactivity, which has no use unless treated according to specific requirements.

• Environmental Harm: A negative impact on the environment, reducing its environmental or economic value, or affecting its usability or altering its nature, or leading to an imbalance in its natural elements either directly or indirectly.

• Environmental Degradation: Severe harm to environmental mediums due to the depletion of natural resources, destruction of environmental habitats, extinction of wildlife, or pollution of environmental mediums and deterioration of air, water, and soil quality.

• Environmental Disaster: Any condition or incident resulting from a natural or human action that threatens environmental habitats or harms the environment, requiring greater resources and measures than those required for ordinary incidents or those that local capacities can accommodate, necessitating the intervention and cooperation of relevant authorities.

• Ozone-Depleting Substances: Substances characterized by their chemical stability in the atmospheric layer near the earth's surface and containing one or more atoms of chlorine or bromine or both, initiating reactions that lead to chain reactions in the stratospheric layer resulting in ozone depletion.

• Wastewater: Water whose use has changed its color, taste, smell, or level of health or environmental safety, including water used for health, industrial, or agricultural purposes.

• Treated Wastewater: Water that comes out of a wastewater treatment plant after being treated according to specific standards and criteria. 

• Water Injection: The pumping of treated wastewater into underground layers.

• Environmental Audit Study: A study that includes the results of an objective, organized, periodic, and documented examination of the operational processes of a specific facility, prepared after the establishment or during the operation of the facility; to verify its compliance with environmental requirements, controls, standards, and criteria and to improve the environmental performance of the facility, and its adherence to the provisions contained in the Law, regulations, and licenses and permits. 

• Strategic Environmental Assessment Study: A study to identify, estimate, and evaluate the environmental impacts that may result from policies, strategies, plans, and programs at the sectoral and regional levels proposed by government entities for allocation to a developmental or human sector; to include all environmental considerations and integrate them alongside economic and social considerations.

• Environmental Impact Assessment Study: A study to identify, estimate, and evaluate the environmental impacts that may result from the establishment of any project or activity, or its operation, modification, or removal; to include all environmental considerations and integrate them alongside economic, social, and security considerations, and to identify the necessary alternatives and measures to protect the environment.

• Compensations: What is paid by the party responsible for harm, pollution, or environmental degradation; to compensate for the damage resulting from that harm, pollution, or environmental degradation or to remove it. This includes rehabilitation costs that they pay if they are unable to carry out the rehabilitation.

• Rehabilitation: Any procedure on an environmentally degraded site, or one that has suffered environmental damage or pollution; to restore it to its natural state of ecological balance, according to the standards set by the competent authority.

• Eco-Tourism: Environmentally friendly tourism activities practiced by humans, preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the environment.

The Law aims to protect, develop, and sustain the environment; adhere to environmental principles; and regulate the environmental sector and related activities and services.

Engaging in an environmental activity or an activity that has an environmental impact without a permit or license shall be prohibited, as specified by the regulations.

A holder of a license or permit shall comply with this Law, the regulations, and the terms and conditions of the permit or license, as well as relevant instructions and decisions issued by the competent authority.

The competent authority shall set the rules for the implementation of the environmental programs, plans, and voluntary initiatives.

Any activity that may pollute, harm, or adversely affect the use of environmental mediums and water resources shall be prohibited, as specified by the regulations.

No person may –without obtaining a permit or license in accordance with the regulations– use, transfer, store, sell, or promote natural resources or their products that are found in the territory of the Kingdom, including its mainland, islands, and airspace, as well as its internal waters and territorial sea and their seabed, subsoil, and airspace, in addition to all other maritime areas over which the Kingdom exercises sovereignty or jurisdiction under International Law.

A holder of a license or permit who engages in activities that may result in the release of emissions or pollutants or may affect environmental mediums shall:
1. comply with the environmental requirements, rules, procedures, standards, and measurements specified by the regulations;
2. take the necessary measures and procedures when approaching the limits of environmental measurements, as specified by the regulations;
3. develop programs and devices for detection and measurement, and for monitoring the quality of environmental mediums, as specified by the regulations;
4. provide the competent authority periodically with data and reports relating to emissions or pollutants resulting from the activities he engages in to review and verify their conformity, and determine any violation of measurements, standards, and requirements, as specified by the regulations;
5. provide the competent authority with the environmental audit, as specified by the regulations; and
6. rehabilitate environmental mediums that have degraded as a result of his activities, as specified by the regulations.
The competent authority shall determine the activities referred to in this Article.