The next 50 years could see a fourfold increase in the size of the global economy and significant reductions in poverty, provided that governments act now to avert a growing risk of severe damage to the environment and profound social unrest, according to a new World Bank report.
According to the World Development Report (WDR) 2003, in nearly 50 years, the world could have a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $140 trillion and a total population of nine billion people, up from six billion today. Without better policies and institutions, social and environmental strains may derail development progress, leading to higher poverty levels and a decline in the quality of life for everybody.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the need to address social and environmental pressures in the coming years is particularly urgent. With many countries in the region maintaining population growth rates that are among the highest in the world, MENA’s population is expected to nearly double from 295 million today to about 560 million in 2050.
Rapid expansion of the population in MENA is further aggravated by the lack of water security, which is manifested through water scarcity, inequitable distribution of water resources and degradation of water quality. Water availability per capita is one of the lowest in the world, at approximately 1,200 cubic meters per year.
More importantly, with the region’s rapid population growth, per capita availability of water is expected to halve over the next 30 years. As a result, managing water usage and allocation in a sustainable manner is critical to MENA’s economic and social development.
Moreover, the pressure on all natural resources generated by demographic growth threatens further development unless economic and social trends can be redirected onto a more environmentally sustainable path.
“In the MENA region, the strains on natural resources, especially water and fragile lands, are probably greatest compared with other regions,” said Mustapha Nabli, World Bank chief economist for MENA.
“The region’s greatest development priority is that of creating better employment opportunities for the fastest growing labor force in the world, so output growth will have to be substantially higher than what the region has experienced over the last several decades. That exceptional growth challenge means even greater strain put upon scarce and fragile natural resources,” he added.
The World Bank will be calling on heads of state, ministers, private sector leaders and civil society representatives at next week's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg to reach agreement on steps that can be taken now to ensure that poverty-reducing growth does not come at great cost to future generations.
Today, some 1.3 billion people live in fragile and often remote rural ecosystems—semi-arid
areas, mountains and forests, and their numbers are growing faster than populations in more favored rural areas. Determining how these people will be able to overcome poverty, adapt to new opportunities, or where necessary, migrate out of these fragile ecosystems is a major challenge to sustainable development.
This issue is particularly relevant to the MENA economies, where more than a third of the region’s population and 70 percent of the region’s poor live in rural, predominantly fragile ecosystems.
The WDR 2003 estimates that the global population will reach nine billion people by 2050, and stabilize by the end of the century at 10 billion or less. By mid-century, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. The demands for energy, water, housing and education will be enormous.
In MENA, the expected increase in demand for these assets is perhaps the highest, given the region’s past and present population growth. As a result, MENA countries face the challenge of strengthening their institutions to manage these demands efficiently.
Yet the population trends also offer windows of opportunity, according to the report. Most of the capital stock—apartments, shops, factories, and roads—that will be needed by the growing population in coming decades does not yet exist. Better standards, increased efficiency, and new, more inclusive means of decision-making could mean that this new capital stock could be built in ways that puts fewer strains on society and the environment.
Similarly, as population growth slows, economic growth will translate more readily into lower
poverty and higher incomes per capita—provided that economic and population growth over the next few decades has been handled in a way that does not destroy the natural resources that underpin growth or erode critical social values, such as trust.
The sustainable development challenge requires actions on several fronts. In MENA, perverse subsidies that exist in sectors such as energy, water management and roads can encourage activities that are not sustainable, and lock up scarce resources vital to the development process.
In Iran, for example, the distortion of the economy stems in part from petroleum prices that are 10 percent of world prices, with an implicit subsidy that amounts to more than 18 percent of GDP. Removal of this subsidy would release vast resources to be redirected toward environmental and social investments, and other expenditures underpinning sustainable development.
Across the developing world, new rules, organizations, and other institutional innovations are
already leading to better environmental outcomes. All but a handful of countries have eliminated lead from gasoline. In the past 10 years, the percentage of people in low and middle-income countries with access to sanitation has climbed to 52 percent, from 44 percent.
Most importantly, poor people must have a greater say in the process that will shape their lives in the decades ahead. Decisions need to be taken in an inclusive and consultative manner that recognizes the views of poor people while also empowering them with greater control of their own resources. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
