[betaby]

Let's concentrate on couple of countries to simplify the discussion: Iran, Egypt, Algeria. Water scarcity there is dominated by explosive population growth there in the last 70 years.

Water is not scarce in general, just yet. It scarce where population is exploding.

[mring33621]

High birth rates in low-resource localities seems like a poor survival strategy.

Unless the new people are used as an army to take the needed resources from others...