Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Continent of Gigantic ProblemsThe Second Bounce from the Tropics:Population, Oil and Climate Change or Whenthe Dust Settles over ArabiaArab Spring 2011. Population explosion in the Arab world. Can the desert feeda hundred million people? Peak oil: when oil production reaches peak and startsto decline. Food self-sufficiency versus dependency on importing food. Russian heatwave 2010. Food Price Index FAO. Economic crisis in Europe, oil price and tourismperspectives. Where do unemployed young men without a chance to start a familyfind their self-fulfillment and dignity? Prospects of further drying of the Mediterraneanand the Middle East. Implications for Sub-Saharan Africa.Let us move from the southernmost tip of the continent to the northern edges on thecoasts of the Mediterranean Sea, to the countries of Northern Africa and the Middle East.At the beginning of 2011 this region was engulfed by a wave of unrest, which gained thepoetic name the “Arab spring”. Many analysts were fast to explain the Arab revolt as a fruitof cell phones and computer networks. This interpretation of events glides over the surface;it does not answer the question “why?” and most fundamentally the cardinal question”what will follow?”. The answer to this question will have profound implications also forcountries south of the Sahara.Just a few years ago, the then Libyan leader, Gaddafi, addressed a group of Europeanwomen in a tent erected symbolically in Rome about how Islam would conquer Europewithin one generation. His recipe was simple and wonderfully imaginative. Throughpopulation growth in the spirit of the biblical “make love and multiply”, humble and fertileIslamic women would “out-produce” the spoiled and infertile women of the West. As theEuropeans disappeared, their Lebensraum would be occupied by a growing population ofimmigrants from the Islamic world.However, the bizarre Libyan colonel was not the only one captivated by this vision.Perhaps it was not even his idea—he could easily have borrowed it from frustrated jihadists.47