How might North Africa Southwest Asia and Central Asia deal with the challenges of population growth?

Answer 1

Best Solution
If the governments of these regions actually wanted to pursue an intelligent policy with long-term value as a solution, then the most effective way to combat overpopulation would be to support and promote WOMEN'S RIGHTS. There is a near perfect correlation between increases in women's rights and decrease in population fertility. There are several reasons for this. As women are able to be educated, this pushes the age of marriage later and gives a woman incentives to avoid childbearing, primarily related to having a high-powered career. Additionally, giving women rights means that there will be fewer marriages because if a woman's opinion (in addition to a man's opinion) needs to be consulted there will necessarily be fewer agreements. Finally, women find it very difficult to marry a man who is less wealthy than she is, meaning that successful women are less likely to find partners they deem to be suitable than impoverished women.

In countries where women's rights are well-enforced, women (1) marry less often and marry at a later age if they do marry, (2) are less likely to have children once married, and (3) if they choose to have children, tend to have fewer children than women in situations where women's rights are not enforced. In fact, many European countries and East Asian countries are experiencing reproduction at less than the replacement rate, meaning that there are fewer people in the children's generation than their parents. (Although in Europe, this is offset by massive Immigration.)

Actual Measures
Most of these countries do not actually have a plan to deal with population growth and, instead, have two different "solutions". The Central Asian countries actually like having large population growth rates because of the corvée labor system, especially in Uzbekistan. Having a slower growing population would interfere with their use of child labor.

Conversely, many of the countries of North Africa and Southwest Asia maintain very porous borders, hoping that the excess population will emigrate to other countries that can better take care of them, like those of Europe. It is incredibly irresponsible, but governments in North Africa and Southwest Asia are not known for being particularly responsible.