Impact is assessed in three fields
Each investment model is examined for its economic impact, its social impact and its environmental impact. The three fields are reported separately. They are not combined, and no field takes precedence over another.
Economic impact
Two objectives. Food supply: imported food replaced, crops produced, reliability, speed, and private investment attracted. Revenue: payments received by the government, their duration, and the public cost of obtaining them.
Social impact
The effect on citizens: who is able to obtain land, how many people are employed and on what terms, and what happens to the communities and land users already present.
Environmental impact
The effect on the resource base: water consumption and water source life, soil condition, improvement of degraded land, native vegetation, wildlife habitat, and enforcement.
Field 1 · Economic impact
Economic impact covers two objectives of the Ministry. The first is national food security: whether the model reduces dependence on imported food, and at what scale, speed and reliability. The second is revenue: what payments the government receives, over what period, and at what public cost.
- Imported food replaced, measured in tonnes
- Progress toward national coverage of strategic crops
- Which crops the model produces
- Exposure to shipping disruption and foreign price change
- Quantity produced, and its reliability year to year
- Time between allocation and first harvest
- Private investment attracted to develop the land
- Payments received by the government: sale proceeds, lease rent, licence fees, share of profit
- Whether payment is a single amount or a continuing income, and for how long
- Public expenditure required for the model to operate
Why revenue is included. Generating revenue where possible is among the Ministry's objectives. A model that produces food while returning nothing to the government, and one that produces the same food while returning a continuing income, are not equivalent, and an assessment that omitted revenue would treat them as though they were.
Why cost is recorded alongside revenue. Gross payments received do not describe the financial position on their own. Some models generate revenue only after substantial public expenditure on infrastructure, subsidy or land clearing. Direct public operation can produce the largest gross income while also being the most expensive model to run. EC8 and EC10 are therefore read together, and the net position is revenue received less public cost.
Distinction between EC7 and EC8. Capital mobilised (EC7) is private money spent on developing the land. It is not received by the government and is not revenue. Direct revenue (EC8) is what the government is actually paid. The two are recorded separately because a model can attract large private investment while producing no payment to the Ministry, and the reverse is also possible.
Field 2 · Social impact
Social impact is defined as the effect on citizens and on existing rural populations. It measures who is able to participate, what employment results, and what happens to people already using the land.
- Whether ordinary citizens can obtain land under the model
- Employment created, and whether seasonal or permanent
- Whether allocation rules favour applicants with existing capital
- Whether existing rural settlements are sustained or land concentrates
- Whether farming knowledge is transferred to Saudi operators
- Effect on existing land users, including customary grazing
- Population movement not caused by the allocation itself
- Wider social policy outside the land relationship
- Employment valued as tax base rather than as livelihood
Reason for inclusion. Allocation rules determine who can participate before any land is transferred. The same mechanism can be open to citizens or restricted to companies depending on how its rules are written, so participation and access are assessed as properties of the rules rather than as outcomes observed afterwards. Displacement is included because tenure that is unrecorded is not evidence of absent use.
Field 3 · Environmental impact
Environmental impact is defined as the effect on the water, soil, vegetation and wildlife of the allocated area. It measures both protection of the existing resource and improvement of degraded land.
- Whether the model rewards volume of water used or efficiency of use
- Length of the agreement compared with the life of the water source
- Soil condition over the period of use
- Improvement of degraded land, including afforestation and dune stabilisation
- Clearance of native vegetation and ground cover
- Wildlife habitat and the ability of animals to move through the area
- Whether the government can act on damage, and whether condition is monitored
- Whether development is legally permitted — assessed in the land evaluation
- Air quality and emissions
- Effects outside the allocated area
Reason for inclusion as a separate field. In earlier drafts water and soil were treated as conditions attached to each model rather than as a field of impact. That treatment understated them. Water availability is the principal constraint on agriculture in the Kingdom, and models differ in whether they improve degraded land or exhaust it. Both effects are consequences of the allocation mechanism and are therefore recorded as impact.
Distinction between EN5 and EN6. Vegetation and habitat are assessed separately because they are not the same measurement. Land can be cleared and replanted with a crop, restoring vegetation cover while removing the habitat that supported wildlife. Habitat also depends on the ability of animals to move between feeding and water, which fencing can prevent without any vegetation being removed.
Relationship to the land evaluation. The land evaluation records whether an area lies within a protected area and whether development is permitted. That is a legal finding. The environmental criteria here assess what the model does to water, soil, vegetation and habitat on land where development is permitted. The two are separate and neither replaces the other.
Form of the answers
Each criterion is answered in one or two sentences describing what the model does. No answer is expressed as a number, a rating or a rank.
Absence of a combined score
The twenty-three criteria are not weighted against one another and are not combined into a single figure. Producing one would require deciding, for example, how much citizen participation is worth relative to reduced wheat imports, to revenue received, or to reduced water abstraction. That decision is a matter of policy and belongs to the Ministry.
A combined figure would contain that decision without stating it, and a reader of the result would not know which weighting had been applied. The twenty-three answers are therefore reported separately. This follows the method used in the land evaluation, where capability, water, land rights and crop suitability are reported as independent findings and are not averaged.
The twenty-three criteria
Each criterion is listed under its field. The entry states what is measured, what changes the result, how the answer is read, and the misreading that has to be guarded against. Select a criterion to open it.
Where an improvement in one criterion causes a loss in another
Eleven pairs of criteria are in direct conflict. In each case a model that performs well on one performs less well on the other, and the relationship is structural rather than incidental. These are recorded because a combined score would resolve each of them according to an unstated weighting.
Performance across the three fields is inversely related
Read together, the conflicts show a consistent relationship. Models that produce food soonest, attract the most private investment and generate the most revenue tend to allocate land to a small number of large operators and to consume the most water. Models that reach individual citizens and protect the resource base tend to produce more slowly, at smaller scale, to generate little or no revenue, and to leave a larger share of the cost with the government.
Revenue introduces a further relationship within the economic field itself. Sale produces the largest single payment and ends all further income from that land, while retaining ownership produces a smaller continuing income and preserves the government's ability to act later.
No model performs well across all three fields. Which combination is preferred is a policy decision. This module records the relationships so that the decision is taken with them stated.