THE FUTURE OF SAUDI ARABIA
Focusing on the future of Saudi Arabia, more changes are expected to be observed because they have already started. These changes will be diversified in all the main sectors of the country’s economy. Right at the moment, the agricultural sector of this country has begun to diminish and so the country is likely to face shortage of food in future (Crane, 2012). The country has been using the advanced technologies to boost its agricultural sector up to certain levels but had to decrease in consideration to the future water demands. On the other hand, the population growth rate of the country has been increasing tremendously from the year 2008 by a margin of one million people. Considering its current population which is 33.4 million, in 20 years to come the population is expected to hit approximately 54million.
These demographics as far as population have a lot to imply in regard to the climate and environmental conditions of the country. Considering that the available land remains constant while the population will have increased, people are likely to clear forests to create settlement areas due to population density (Crane, 2012). So, forestry cover will be affected greatly following impacts of population growth rate in the country. As a cyclic cycle, there will be climatic changes as a result of reduced forestry cover. The pressure on the available land in the rural areas is also expected to force some people out of the rural areas to urban areas especially where there is no enough space to accommodate more people.
Considering the future of Saudi Arabia economy, on clear fact is that the economy mainly depends on oil and now that the country is entering into post oil era, its future economic progress is likely to decline if not keenly taken care of (Crane, 2012). According to Riyadh, the trend has already set in through what has been experienced in the past three year, with the oil share declining to less than 50 percent. That has been considered as a huge reduction when compared to what the 90 percent revenue which the sector of oil accounted for before.
There is still hope for the country however, and one of the approaches is by investing on the manufacturing sector to create jobs in its urban areas which will reduce pressure in the rural areas by encouraging urban migration. This would both take care of the environmental degradation and climatic changes. The government can encourage manufacturing sector by reducing the legislative measures on domestic as well as foreign investors.
References
Crane, R. D. (2012). Planning the future of Saudi Arabia; a model for achieving national priorities.