Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz confirmed on Thursday Saudi Arabia’s commitment to cooperation to combat climate change.

“Enhancing the level of international cooperation is the optimal solution to meet the challenges of climate change,” the King told the virtual “Leaders Summit on Climate” hosted by US President Joe Biden.

Biden welcomed 40 leaders for the two-day Earth Day summit.

“We would like to affirm our keenness and commitment to cooperation to combat climate change in order to create a better environment for future generations, wishing success for our efforts to protect our planet,” said King Salman.

He said the Kingdom had launched packages of strategies and regulations with the aim of producing 50 percent of the Kingdom’s energy needs by 2030 using clean, renewable sources.

“During our G20 presidency last year we advocated the need to adopt a notion of a circular carbon economy launching two international initiatives to curb land degradation and to protect coral reefs.”

He said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently announced the Green Saudi Initiative and the Green Middle East Initiative, which aim to reduce carbon emissions in the region by more than 10 percent of current global contributions.

They also aim at planting 50 billion trees in the region, he added.