RIYADH: Countries in the Middle East and North Africa region will need to spend $500 billion on urban regeneration programs to achieve their sustainability objectives, according to a report from Strategy&. The document says revamping older parts of towns and cities is a “necessity” if governments want to see a population expansion in urban hubs, singling out Saudi Arabia’s ambition to double the number living in Riyadh by 2030. About 9 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions originate in the MENA area, with building materials, construction, and operations responsible for 50 percent of those emissions. To fulfill the region’s net-zero commitments, it will therefore be crucial to reduce emissions from all parts of the built environment during any development work. The report said that therefore any regeneration projects should be carried out based on environmental, social and governance principles as this will meet key investment criteria for investors and bankers and should lead to further financing opportunities and foreign direct investment. “As recently as 2018, roughly 31 percent of those in the Arab world living in cities did so in decaying neighborhoods and dwellings. This injection of capital and urban planning has enormous potential to transform the livelihoods of millions of people, directly or indirectly,” Karim Abdallah, partner with Strategy& Middle East said. The report stated: “The outward movement of people to more recently developed districts has come at a cost: the expansion of inefficient infrastructure, and the neglect of older parts of town,” “Now, given Saudi Arabia’s goals to double the population of Riyadh by 2030 and boost tourism, regenerating those older core areas has become a necessity,” it added. According to a survey by PwC survey released in March, asset managers and investors in Saudi Arabia want a more nuanced approach that balances ESG demand with today’s challenging economic reality, The results of the survey stated that institutions intend to manage $33.9 trillion in ESG-related assets by 2026, up from $18.4 trillion in 2021. In the future decades, nations like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE intend to achieve a net-zero goal, with the Kingdom hoping to hit that target by 2060.