Close to 50% of the projected increase in the world’s population from today until 2050 is anticipated to take place in a few large countries within the developing world, and the share of the developing world population will increase from 66% in 1950 to 86% by 2050.3 Moreover, the population of the developing world is young and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. [...] The population of the region has quintupled since 1950 from below 110 million to 569 million in 2017.15 The total fertility rate of MENA was approximately 6.5 from 1975 to 1980.16 The region was one of the highest in terms of population growth in the world, with annual growth of 2.1% between 1990 and 2003.17 For example, Algeria’s population will exceed 72 million in 2050.18 Iraq, which had a popu. [...] In this centralized economy, indirect energy subsidies amount to 7.7% of the budget, which is a fraction of other subsidies as well.41 The Algerian budget is excessively dependent on the export of hydrocarbons, which make up nearly 94% of the country’s income, and it is affected by fluctuation in the global market.42 The increase in population means that the government’s exports of oil and gas wil. [...] Population growth has increased this extraction, which “harms the future viability and productivity of the aquifers and, in coastal areas, may result in the intrusion of seawater into the aquifer as a consequence of the formation of large cones of depression.”69 The misuse of water in general and groundwater in particular will have a grave impact on agriculture. [...] Attempts at “industrialization and urbanization of the countries since the 1980s did not exempt the region from global trends; these trends are generally associated with an increase in the education level of society and an increasingly global network.”86 The authoritarian nature of the regimes in MENA created barriers to reform the political system to the extent that it became unreformable.
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- United States of America
