Abstract
Most MENA nations suffer from a population growth rate that is higher than most of the rest of the world. The region has the largest percentage of unemployed youth than anywhere in the world. The high rate of unemployment among the youth led to dissatisfaction that was a contributor to the Arab Spring and the resulting political upheavals that led to the toppling of governments in three countries, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Limited arable land and water result in MENA’s dependence on food imports. Reliance on oil exports to pay for food imports is risky. Thus, MENA has an incentive to push for policies to diversify the region’s economies. Achieving such a goal is not possible without first improving the institutional environment with the rule of law and the protection of human and property rights. Without this, MENA is not likely to attract foreign direct investment that could help to absorb a segment of the large unemployed youth.
In summary, with a high population growth and limited water and arable land, foreign exchange is needed to import food. Since oil revenues cannot be relied upon, MENA’s economies need to diversify away from oil-export dependency and to attract foreign direct investment. Doing this requires welcoming business environments and better institutions. Such institutions and increased employment of women could help curb population growth.
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Notes
- 1.
For purposes of this book, we include the following countries in our definition of MENA: (see Chap. 1) Middle East, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, and North Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia.
- 2.
World Bank information for 2017 indicates that the world rate of population growth was at 1.15% per year compared to both MENA and high-income MENA countries which have population annual growth rates that were at 1.7%. See World Bank (2019 pop growth).
- 3.
Also “known collectively as the ‘Arab uprisings’, began December 17, 2010, in Tunisia … .” (p 1) and “the Arab Uprisings of 2011,” (p 3) which continued through the spring of 2011. See Cammett et al. (2015).
- 4.
See World Bank (2019 pop growth) for data on population growth rates of most countries of the world.
- 5.
Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He arguably saved more people from early deaths than anyone before him.
- 6.
The authors were a husband and wife team, Dennis and Donella Meadows , Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III (Bailey 2015, p 32).
- 7.
US Bureau of the Census at https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/graph_growthrate.php. Accessed 27 Jan 2019
- 8.
Furthermore, global greening has occurred due to carbon dioxide fertilization from the human use of fossil fuels. This fertilization has added, in the last 30 years, by one estimate, “. . . a green continent twice the size of the mainland USA.” Matt Ridley, “Global Warming and Global Greening,” lecture at Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), October 17, 2016, at the Annual Conference of the GWPF presented at the Royal Society, London, England. Hear lecture and see script at the following website: http://www.thegwpf.org/matt-ridley-global-warming-versus-global-greening. Accessed 28 Jan 2017. Furthermore, the article to which Ridley refers is Zhu et al. (2016).
- 9.
“According to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Global Carbon Project, global carbon emissions are projected to stall in 2015. Detailed data were made available in the open-access data journal Earth System Science Data (ESSD) today, and the corresponding study was published simultaneously in the journal Nature Climate Change,” December 7, 2015. Quoted from “Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Project to Stall,” Earth System Science Data at http://www.earth-system-science-data.net/about/news_and_press/2015-12-07_global-carbon-budget.html. Accessed 8 Mar, 2017. Also, see NASA report https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth. Accessed 8 Mar 2017
- 10.
UN cited in Roser et al. (2019).
- 11.
According the CIA’s 2018 World Factbook, 42 of 234 countries listed have population growth rates of zero or less per year. Furthermore, from the same Factbook, 100 countries of the 234 countries ranked still have a fertility rate above the replacement rate of 2.1 per woman compared to 124 countries at 2.1 children per woman or below. See CIA World Factbook, at the following link: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/fields/356rank.html. Accessed 30 Jan 2019
- 12.
Low fertility rates are often leading indicators of eventually low population growth rates as the low fertility rates are maintained through the women’s reproductive years.
- 13.
For more about economic development enhancing choices in general, see Sen (2001).
- 14.
See Seth Norton (2002). See perc.org/sites/default/files/ps24.pdf cited in Bailey (2015, p 25).
- 15.
World Bank statistics from 2014 shows that these three countries are among the MENA countries with the lowest fertility rates (children born per women): 2.2 in Tunisia; 1.5 in Lebanon; and 1.4 in Malta. A fertility rate of 2.1 is considered replacement rate below which population would diminish. See World Bank (2019 fertility). They tend to illustrate the point this chapter is trying to make.
- 16.
On July 5, 2018, Lithuania became the 36th member of the OECD. See http://www.oecd.org/. Accessed 13 May 2019
- 17.
The population total for Lebanon in 2016 is from the World Bank website http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/POP.pdf. Accessed 14 Oct 2017
- 18.
The estimated populations of Chicago and Los Angeles are, respectively, 2.736 million and 4.018 million. These estimates were found at the following website: http://uspopulation2017.com/population-los-angeles-2017.html. Accessed 14 Oct 2017
The combined total area of Mississippi and California is about 524,997 km2, or almost as large as the 527,985 km2 of the total area of arable land in MENA. The total area of Mississippi and California is adapted from the following website of the US Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/state-area.html. Retrieved 16 Sept 2016
- 19.
The significance of the slope coefficient suggests that there is a relationship with p-value less than 0.001. The coefficient of determination or the relationship’s strength is moderate, that is, about 35.1% of the total variation in population growth rates is associated with variations in the freedom ranking.
- 20.
The regression equation was y = 2.959–0.02417x, where x is the position in the rank and y is the birth rate per year.
- 21.
For instance, “In Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, consumer demand for wheat-based products is expanding based on rapidly growing urban populations” (USDA 2017).
- 22.
The EIU has excluded from their sample several countries that are included in our definition of MENA.
- 23.
These are Ireland, which was ranked as having the highest food security of all 113 countries in 2017, but in 2018 was ranked second; Singapore and Norway used in our argument that having good institutions matters more for prosperity than having resources; the United States having one of the two largest economies in the world; and Burundi, the lowest ranked country.
- 24.
The population growth rates and sizes and the calculations for the weighted average are based on World Bank statistics used for Table 7.1.
- 25.
The population size of San Jose, California , at 495,000 is from the following website: http://uspopulation2017.com/population-los-angeles-2017.html. Accessed 16 Feb 2018
- 26.
We speculate here why this exclusion may have been done. Certainly, it’s difficult then to understand why Iran, at 79 million people, the second largest MENA country after Egypt, and Iraq with 36.4 million both would be excluded. After all, these two countries with 115.5 million people are more than 25% of MENA’s population. But the disorder in the area makes reliable and meaningful statistics difficult to obtain. After all, Libya is suffering from anarchy. Lebanon is taking in many refugees from both Syria and Iraq. And the West Bank and Gaza are too much in disarray. Even so, they all are afflicted by the same two common problems endemic to the whole region to which we will soon turn, namely, diminishing arable land and endemic water stress.
- 27.
“Arable land is the land under temporary agricultural crops (multiple-cropped areas are counted only once), temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow (less than five years). The abandoned land resulting from shifting cultivation is not included in this category. Data for ‘Arable land’ are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable.” See the following website http://faostat.fao.org/site/375/default.aspx for this definition used by both the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Bank. Data retrieved 17 Sept 2016
- 28.
The discovery of natural gas in Egypt’s Mediterranean waters (see Chap. 5 above) will provide temporary relief if the gas is used wisely to diversify its exports to pay for food imports.
- 29.
According to one Brookings study, the “. . . countries in the Middle East and North Africa are the most water scarce globally, with per capita freshwater supplies well below the water ‘poverty’ line of 1000 cubic meters per year” (Devlin 2014, p 1).
- 30.
“Although there is scope for greater efficiency in irrigation, there is simply not enough water in the region to permit anything remotely approaching food self-sufficiency” (Cammett et al. 2015 pp 199-200).
- 31.
“We found that 36 countries face ‘extremely high’ levels of baseline water stress. . . . This means that more than 80% of the water available to agricultural, domestic, and industrial uses is withdrawn annually leaving businesses, farms, and communities vulnerable to scarcity” (Reig et al. 2013).
- 32.
“The forecast of world cereal production in 2017 was raised slightly to 2612 million tonnes [2873 million U.S. tons], 6.8 million tonnes [7.48 million U.S. tons] (0.3%) above the 2016 record. The upward adjustment mostly stems from improved production prospects for coarse grains and wheat, more than offsetting a cut in rice production.” Food and Agricultural Organization, “World Food Situation,” release date: 5/10/2017, p 1. See website: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/. Accessed 7 Oct 2017
- 33.
“Egypt remains the world’s largest wheat importer. Wheat imports for 2016/17 marketing year (July/June) are estimated at 11.5 million tonnes, about the same as the previous year and about one million above the average of the last five years” (FAO 2016).
- 34.
This may change for Egypt once its offshore natural gas deposits are developed, see Chap. 5 above.
- 35.
Anthony Dipaola wrote in December 2018, “Over the past six years, the Saudis have announced investments of more than $350 billion aimed at making the sun-drenched kingdom the, well, a Saudi Arabia of renewable energy. . . . But virtually no construction has begun.” See his article (Dipaola 2018).
- 36.
“. . . the countries of the Middle East, the ones without oil, are export wimps. Exports of goods amount to 15% of their total output today, not much more than 20 years ago despite the explosion of global trade” From Wessel (2011).
- 37.
Of course, at a disaggregated level, it reflects the interest of a foreign business or a foreign citizen that has invented a new product to enjoy the exclusive rights in the United States to make and sell a uniquely produced invention or technology within jurisdictions of the United States. Source: https://www.iusmentis.com/patents/faq/general/. Accessed 2 June 2019
- 38.
- 39.
“WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization] is the global forum for intellectual property (IP) services, policy, information and coppoeration. We are a self-funding agency of the United Nations, with 192 member states. Our mission is to lead the development of a balance and effective intenation IP system that enable innovation and creativity for the benefit of all. Our mandate, governing bodies and prcedures are set out in the WIPO Convention, which established WIPO in 1967.” wipo.int/about-wipo/en/ The data was found at World Intellectual Property Organization (2018).
- 40.
The total value of merchandise imports plus exports for both China and the United States is approximately equal in 2017. United States’ exports ($1.6 trillion) plus imports ($2.3 trilliion) were equal to $3.9 trillion (CIA n.d.b).
- 41.
“The [MENA ] region accounts for a significant and growing portion of worldwide food and feed imports. Despite the violence and political uncertainty hanging over parts of the region, the MENA’s growing populations and rising incomes are driving higher demand for major food and feed grains, soybeans, cotton, and meats. This demand cannot be fulfilled by domestic production alone given the region’s climate and geographic constraints, thus creating a large need for food imports.”
(Nigatu and Motamed 2015).
- 42.
Cammett et al. (2015 pp 204–205) put it this way, “. . . given the increasing scarcity of water, more and more policymakers now recognized that food security must take precedence over food self-sufficiency”.
- 43.
“In the wake of the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, Saudi Arabia’s monarchy bought social peace by quickly boosting wages by $130 billion; Algeria announced a $156 infrastructure and jobs program; and Kuwait gave every citizen $3600 and fourteen months of free groceries” From Bailey (2015, p 47).
- 44.
About this Larry Diamond and Jack Mosbacher have written, “Over the next ten years, new technologies will allow oil producers to extract billions of barrels of exportable oil from the East African Rift Valley and West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. If current estimates are even close to accurate, trillions of dollars in oil revenue will ultimately descend on a dozen African countries that have never before experienced such influxes. . . .All told, within a decade, a third or more African countries may derive the majority of their export earnings from oil and gas” (Diamond and Mosbacher 2013).
- 45.
“The January 25 Revolution [of 2011 in Egypt] prompted a slump in tourism. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, 9.8 million visitors booked a vacation to Egypt in 2011, down from 14.9 million visitors in 2010. The recovery was hampered by further unrest in 2013 with visitor numbers dropping to 9.5 million, after having climbed to 11.5 million in 2012. In 2014, 9.9 million visitors arrived” (Gulhane 2015).
- 46.
For more on this incident that sparked the Arab Spring of 2011 (Fisher 2011).
- 47.
“The kingdom [Saudi Arabia] has a growing population of young people who can’t find good jobs, with an unemployment rate over 28% in 2016 for people aged between 20 and 29,” From Said et al. (2017).
- 48.
“Women in all MENA countries participate in the labor markets much less than women in the rest of the world—only one in four Arab women are in the labor force, compared to a global average of 51%t. As a result, the region has not been able to take advantage of the potential ‘women’s gift,’ or the ‘increased potential saving resulting from increased female labour (sic) even where population growth rates are not slowing down and labour (sic) productivity remains constant (Moghadam and Karshenas 2006, 14)” (Cammett et al. 2015, p 146). The nested quote is from Moghadem and Karshenas (2006).
- 49.
“Falling fertility rates are overdetermined—that is, there is a plethora of mutually reinforcing data and hypotheses that explain the global downtrend. These include the effects of increased economic opportunities, more education, longer lives, greater liberty, and expanding globalization and trade, among others” (Bailey 2015, pp 18–25). Or, “The social economic status of women is . . . crucial to fertility” See Cammett et al. (2015, p 131).
- 50.
“Women in the labor force, and particularly those who are highly educated and tend to have a stronger career orientation, have fewer children” (Blau and Ferber 1986).
- 51.
“Strong cultural values attached to the family and traditional marriage and childbearing practices delayed the transition to lower fertility in the MENA region” (Roudi-Fahimi and Kent 2007).
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Akacem, M., Miller, D.D., Faulkner, J.L. (2020). The Population Threat. In: Oil, Institutions and Sustainability in MENA. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25933-4_7
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