AEON’s leaders bet big on sustainability blueprints

RIYADH: AEON Strategy, an advisory firm founded by Princess Noura bint Turki Al-Saud and Princess Mashael Saud Al-Shalan, aims to lead Saudi Arabia toward a more sustainable future by designing policies that create and maintain benefits for the economy, ecology and society.
As part of its mission, the company is focusing on sustainable development through social, economic, and ecological well-being through policy design and project management.
Their strategy and policy design will facilitate ideal alternatives for environmental sustainability that are compatible with the surrounding environment.
“Within the Arab community, specifically people working within the sustainability sphere, there’s so much knowledge that our ancestors had. As Arabs, by definition, we were always sustainable,” Princess Mashael Saud Al-Shalan, the founding partner of AEON Strategy, told Arab News.
Aligning her vision on this sustainability ethos, the company has set up a project management system that, through thorough planning and personalizing each project to its surrounding ecosystem, creates suitable solutions that preserve the environment.
“As Saudis and as Muslims, we’re brought up in our own religion to constantly be sustainable. We’re one of the first religions to plan wars around not cutting trees, around being kind to animals and elders that were there before us,” she added.
 

The Vision 2030 effect

A catalytic development fueling this sustainability drive is the shift from Saudi Arabia’s overdependence on oil for revenue toward environmental sustainability. When the world is attempting to cut fossil fuel usage and carbon emissions, the Saudi government is firming up to policies to diversify its economy.

Five years after launching the national reform program of “Vision 2030,” the Kingdom has been on a war footing to move the region into a more ecologically sustainable society.
The steps include investing in renewables, especially solar power, minimizing domestic energy and oil consumption and pushing carbon capture technology. 

Greenlighting sustainability

“We deployed more and more of our efforts into very ambitious policies, helping push the ambition of climate policy in the Kingdom, things like the circular carbon economy,” said Princess Mashael on the firm’s aspirations to create a positive impact on the economy and environment.

The co-founder of AEON Strategy, Princess Noura bint Turki Al-Saud, further emphasized the importance of micro-sustainability. For the advisory firm, micro-sustainability is the accumulated individual-level environmental activities that combined may have a substantial environmental impact
“I would say you need to work on yourself before looking around. If you are not sustainable as a human being, I think it becomes very difficult for you to project sustainability to everyone,” said Princess Noura.
“We are evolving day by day, always making adjustments where it’s needed. We talk about sustainability, and a big component of being sustainable is being resilient, and we like to apply that to our own personal and professional lives,” she said while adding that individual effort, habit modification, and attitude adjustments toward recycling and being energy-efficient at a household level will go a long way in bringing about sustainable change.

“You need to have integrity, passion and perseverance. If you have those, then I think you are able to succeed in anything,” said Princess Noura, enlightening on the key pillars for women and men succeeding in the GCC.

The path to sustainability also comes with a lot of identifying goals. “We never have short- and medium-term goals; we always have long-term goals. We have short- and medium-term adaptability mechanisms,” said Princess Mashael.

“With what COVID has taught us, with all of these differences and opportunities arising, not only the bad things but also the good, you need to be resilient, adaptable and nimble to be able to follow opportunities where they may lie,” she added.

The company has also undergone enough challenges to reach its position today. “There’s a challenge of beating through some of the barriers that you face, whether it’s difficulty of finding clients or difficulty of getting your vision or your idea across,” said Princess Noura while elaborating the hurdles the company had to go through.

The efforts are finally paying dividends. From aspirations to rehabilitate 40 million hectares of desert into greenery, to reducing emissions, supporting green initiatives and businesses and resorting to renewable energy, the Kingdom is well poised to achieve its sustainability dream and exceed expectations of the Vision 2030 blueprint.