Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), land is scarce and immensely valuable because of strong geographic and climatic constraints (84 percent of land in the region is barren and only 3.5 percent is cultivated). The projected increase in the demand for land stemming from demographic trends, coupled with the shrinking supply of land arising from climatic and governance factors, are indicative of a looming crisis at a time the region is also facing a dramatic social and political transformation. The reserves for land cultivation are almost exhausted, and the room for expanding cropland under rainfed conditions is the lowest in the world, limited to only 9–17 percent of the existing area under cultivation, as opposed to 150 percent globally.

Urbanization trends are also exerting pressure on land. With the urban population expected to increase by 60 percent (190 million) by 2050, under current conditions the total urban built-up area in the MENA region will likely have to expand by at least 50 percent (1.3 million additional hectares). And yet land remains inefficiently, inequitably, and unsustainably used.

Meanwhile, both firms and individuals face high barriers to accessing land, with adverse effects throughout the MENA region. Twenty-three percent of firms in the manufacturing and service sectors identify land accessibility as a major constraint on their business operations.

Political connections are used to access land, which may result in the misallocation of land to politically connected firms instead of to more productive ones. In the MENA region, there are twice as many politically connected firms (5.9 percent) as in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region (2.4 percent), with a few countries experiencing very high levels of political connections among firms (up to 28 percent).

Barriers to accessing land reduce economic efficiency within and across sectors and perpetuate inequality, especially among women and vulnerable groups. Women in the MENA region have the lowest rate of ownership of agricultural properties in the world and are two to three times more likely to fear losing their property in the event of spousal death or divorce. Formal and informal institutions and gender-imbalanced social norms and practices (especially in rural areas and in matters of inheritance and asset management) do not sufficiently support women’s rights. Indeed, women commonly face social pressures to “voluntarily” renounce their inheritance of properties—according to Jordanian shariʻa court data, over the last decade up to a third of heirs fully relinquished their inheritance rights every year. Refugees also face difficult access to land, with conflict in the MENA region causing displacement of millions of people who lack housing, land, and property rights in both origin and destination countries. Moreover, the land scarcity crisis is exacerbated by conflicts, which are additional factors contributing to land degradation. In fact, a comparison of cropland areas in the vicinity of the Türkiye and Syrian Arab Republic border shows that the conflict caused the Syrian side to lose 7 percent of its cropland by 2017.