Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, land is a scarce and valuable resource. The projected increase in land demand due to demographic trends, coupled with decreasing land supply due to climatic and governance factors, indicate a looming crisis happening at a time when the region is also facing dramatic social and political transformation. Reserves for land cultivation are almost exhausted, while total built-up area will need to expand to accommodate high demographic growth. Yet, land remains inefficiently, inequitably, and unsustainably used. There are strong barriers to land access for both firms and individuals. Firms resort to political connections to access land, resulting in land misallocation.

Women are 2 to 3 times more likely to fear losing their property in the case of spousal death or divorce, and their rights are not sufficiently supported by institutions and gender-imbalanced social norms. Refugees also face difficulties in accessing land; conflict in the region is causing the displacement of millions of people who lack necessary housing, land, and property rights. This report identifies and analyzes the economic, environmental, and social challenges associated with land in MENA countries, shedding light on policy options to address them.

It focuses on two main constraints—scarcity of land and weak land governance—and how they affect land use and access, the resulting inefficiencies and inequities, and associated economic and social costs. It highlights the need for MENA countries to think about land more holistically and to reassess the strategic trade-offs involving land, while minimizing land distortions and serving economic development. It is also an attempt to fill major data gaps and promote a culture of open data, transparency, and inclusive dialogue on land. These efforts are important steps that will contribute to renewing the social contract, accompany economic and digital transformation, and facilitate recovery and reconstruction in the region.

The growing challenge of land scarcity, exacerbated by population growth and the impacts of climate change, threaten economic development in the Middle East and North Africa region.

A new World Bank report, "Land Matters: Can Better Governance and Management of Scarcity Prevent a Looming Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa?", highlights how weak governance is contributing to the inefficient and unsustainable use of land. Indeed, access to land is a severe constraint for both people and businesses in the MENA region.

The report proposes a series of reforms, including the adoption of transparent market-driven processes to value and transfer land, as well as the creation of complete inventories of public land and improvements in the registration of land rights. Steps such as these could support more efficient land use and land management decisions and ensure that land serves social, economic and fiscal functions in a region where property taxes represent less than one percent of GDP. Moreover, sensible land policies could also reduce gender inequalities and promote women’s empowerment.

In a nutshell, the report stresses that “land matters” and that it is time to openly discuss and address land issues in policy debates in the MENA region. Addressing the land crisis will help countries move towards a path of more sustainable and inclusive growth.

Land degradation and desertification,11 long under way in the MENA region, especially in Algeria, Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Morocco, and Syria (IPCC 2019), have high economic costs. These processes stem from both climatic and anthropological factors. Experts predict that volatile temperature fluctuations and drought will continue
to cause land degradation, posing major problems to agriculture. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it is estimated that temperatures will rise by 1.8–4.1 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to an increase of 5–15 percent in the demand for agricultural water, especially affecting oases (IPCC 2019). As for the role of human interventions in land degradation
in the MENA region, they include unsustainable agricultural practices (Abu Hammad and Tumeizi 2012; Jendoubi et al. 2020), government policies (Nielsen and Adriansen 2005), and institutions (as the analysis in the previous section confirmed). Land degradation on this scale has a significant economic cost. For example, Réquier-Desjardins and Bied-
Charreton (2006) estimate the cost of degradation at about 1 percent of the GDP of Algeria and Egypt and 0.5 percent of the GDP of Morocco and Tunisia. Land degradation costs on average 1 percent of GDP in MENA countries (World Bank 2019).