Dowden said London could become ‘NEOM’s second home for design and project management’ after cutting a green ribbon to open the central London outpost.
The deputy prime minister described London’s NEOM office – the development’s first outside Saudi Arabia – as a ‘milestone’ for UK and Saudi-NEOM ties in a speech last month to ‘distinguished guests and strategic partners’.
He said: ‘This is an important milestone, integrating NEOM with London’s finance and tech ecosystems,’ adding that it would promote ‘investment and growth across the UK’.
The emergence of the deputy prime minister’s role in the NEOM office opening, which was also attended by Prince Khalid bin Bandar AL Saud, Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and NEOM CEOs Nadhmi Al-Nasr and Abdallah Alhazani, follows repeated human rights warnings issued by the United Nations over NEOM.
The highly contentious $500 billion smart city development, which includes flagship project The Line – a proposed 170km-long, 500m-tall linear city – has involved the forced eviction of members of the Howeitat tribe in the country’s north west by Saudi authorities to make way for construction, according to the UN.
In May, the UN said it was alarmed at the ‘imminent risk of execution’ of three members of the tribe it said were arrested for opposing The Line’s construction.
Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s economic affairs director, reacted by querying what Dowden and the UK government was doing to uphold human rights in regard to NEOM, which is spearheaded by the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He said: ‘As Oliver Dowden will be aware, Saudi Arabia has an appalling human rights record – including how it treats overseas workers – and any UK support for NEOM must come with pressure on Riyadh to ensure that the project avoids further human rights violations.’
Frankental added that UK architects working on NEOM also had a responsibility to make sure they are not complicit in human rights violations. Those concerns were echoed by others the AJ spoke to.
‘The onus will be on architecture and other UK firms contracted to NEOM to carry out proper due diligence, including on labour practices among subcontractors and in supply chains,’ said Frankental.
‘As we’ve seen with its enormous sports-washing enterprise, money is no object to the Saudi authorities and NEOM should be seen through a similar lens – as a calculated attempt by Saudi Arabia to use spectacular architecture to distract from its terrible human rights record.’
A UK government spokesperson told the AJ: ‘No aspect of our relationship with Saudi Arabia prevents us from speaking frankly about human rights issues through diplomatic channels, including ministers, our ambassador and the British Embassy.’
As the AJ reported earlier this year, NEOM is already working with British architects, including Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid Architects and, until this summer, David Adjaye.
Prominent architects have previously been caught up in controversy over the so-called ‘giga-project’.
Foster + Partners founder Norman Foster withdrew from NEOM’s advisory board in 2018 following the murder of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
While the CIA concluded that Khashoggi had been murdered on the orders of Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince himself claimed that the Washington Post columnist had been murdered in a ‘rogue operation’.
Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, academics at the University of Westminster, described reports of plans to displace thousands of Howeitat tribe members to make way for NEOM as a ‘deeply troubling consequence of neoliberal market-driven authoritarianism’.
‘This aggressive approach not only leads to the tragic loss of homes and ancestral lands but also underscores the profound threats posed to social ecology,’ the pair told the AJ. ‘It highlights the socio-economic disparities and ethical concerns associated with prioritising market-driven interests over human rights and community well-being.’
They also cited Saudi Arabia’s environmental record as a major cause for concern. That includes Saudi Arabia’s reliance on overseas imports for up to 80 per cent of its food, as the United States Department for Agriculture estimates. It is also consistently the world’s biggest exporter of oil.
‘A critical examination is necessary to understand the potential environmental impact associated with sourcing fresh water for a population of nine million [the forecast future population of The Line] and its repercussions on aquatic ecosystems,’ said Sharif and Golzari.
‘When considering that the construction of The Line is projected to generate approximately 1.8 gigatons of CO2, it raises substantial doubts about the project’s environmental sustainability. It is indeed a Fantasy Land, or an “Evil Paradise”.’
Architectural historian and campaigner Barnabas Calder said: ‘Alongside the serious concerns others are articulating, it’s important that UK architects or politicians considering engagement with NEOM secure details to the environmental ambition expressed in NEOM’s Code of Conduct to “first, do no harm”.
‘The visualisations provided for NEOM projects so far look as if they would be likely to sit at the extreme upper end of embodied carbon cost, causing very substantial ecological harm through climate-changing emissions.’
This week, Cambridge University named NEOM among the top 15 threats to global biodiversity because of The Line’s potential disruption of migratory routes for more than 100 different bird species, The Guardian reported.
NEOM is one of several giga-projects under construction as part of the Crown Prince’s Saudi 2030 development drive.
NEOM declined to comment.
DPM @OliverDowden joined #NEOM CEOs Nadhmi Al Nasr & Abdallah Alhazani, & Saudi Ambassador to the UK, HRH Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud, to celebrate the opening of NEOM’s first European office in London, building tech connections & promoting prosperity & growth across the UK. pic.twitter.com/o4sVg0tZ1p
— Cabinet Office (@cabinetofficeuk) November 6, 2023