‘Dangerous’: Greenpeace slam Saudi Arabia ski resort as Kingdom wins 2029 Asian winter games bid

Campaign group Greenpeace has slammed a “dangerous” ski resort being built in Saudi Arabia.

The warning comes days after the desert kingdom won its bid to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games.

Saudi authorities claim that the new Trojena resort in the country’s north west will operate on “sustainable infrastructure” and renewable energy.

But Greenpeace campaigners have questioned the project’s environmental credentials.

"You're changing a natural ecosystem which can have compounding impacts,” says Ahmed El Droubi, regional campaigns manager for Greenpeace.

“If you change something in one place, it may change something else in another place, and so on, and it can have impacts on neighbouring ecosystems.

"I don't even know if we have the capacity to predict and model such impacts, and it is a very dangerous thing to do, to massively alter ecosystems in this manner."

The resort will be located in the Sarawat Mountains, just 50 kilometres inland from the Red Sea. The area is around 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the region, but the snow will still be almost all manmade.

The Gulf Kingdom was the only country to bid for the right to host the 2029 games.

The ski resort - the country’s first outdoor skiing hub - is part of the futuristic $500 billion (€500 billion) Neom development.

It will be open for skiiers ‘year-round,’ according to Neom chief executive Nadhmi al-Nasr.

"Trojena will have a suitable infrastructure to create the winter atmosphere in the heart of the desert, to make this Winter Games an unprecedented global event," he said.

The mountain town will also contain a massive man-made lake and a ‘vertical village’, a collection of high density

Neom is designed to be completely carbon neutral, running on 100 per cent renewable