Legal Personhood for Environmental AIs:

A Governance Model for Planetary Ecosystems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Khalid Alammari

Shatha Ismaeel

 

Abstract: This article analyses the recent idea regarding the use of Environmental Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as a new form of governance of planetary ecosystems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It suggests that the traditional environmental law, which is organised around episodic enforcement and human-oriented monitoring, fails to deal with the cumulative, long-term and spatially diffuse ecological damages that are already becoming major threats to the Kingdom, such as groundwater depletion, desertification, and ecological destruction of the marine ecosystems. Using the Islamic legal ontology and Saudi traditions in governance, the article reimagines legal personhood as a practical juridical status and not a moral equivalence and allows the AI systems to become procedural representatives of ecosystems. The model places Environmental AI in a Shari’ah-compliant model of environmental trusteeship through the principles of khilafah (stewardship), maslahah (public interest), amanah (trust), and hisbah (preventative oversight). This proposal is also contextualised in the analysis within the Vision 2030, which emphasises institutional impetuses to decentralised, data-based environmental governance. The article suggests that the inclusion of Environmental AI as legal actors can trigger the replacement of reactive regulation with anticipatory stewardship, and Saudi Arabia will become a leader in culturally legitimate and technologically progressive planetary governance.