The overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
三月中旬，马达加斯加总统下台，水资源问题难逃其咎韩国水资源问题。韩国大宇物流集团由于担心国内水资源缺乏，粮食短缺日益严重，便租用马达加斯加近一半面积的可耕种土地，用作韩国人民粮食供给。协议中的条款引起举马达加斯加不满（因为人民几乎一无所获），总统的支持率跌至谷底。新总统上任后第一把火，就是撕毁协议。
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
此事三周前，在世界另一端的加利福尼亚，州长阿诺.施瓦辛格宣布事态紧急，扬言要在州中分区供水这已经不是第一次了。联合国世界水资源评估方案最近报道也称：“显然，如果我们希望避免全球水危急，就必须采取紧急行动。”
Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.
地方水资源短缺现象日益严峻。澳大利亚干旱十年，依赖水电的巴西和南非也因为缺水，涡轮不能正常运转，只得受限电之苦。河流抽水过量，中亚咸海供水不足，20世纪80年代发生了生态灾难后，一直没能恢复。
Yet local shortages, caused by individual acts of mismanagement or regional problems, are one thing. A global water crisis, which impinges on supplies of food and other goods, or affects rivers and lakes everywhere, is quite another. Does the world really face a global problem?
个人行为管理不善或者区域问题引发地方性短缺是一回事，然而危及粮食和其他产品供应，影响各处河流湖泊的水危机，则另当别论。现在的世界，当真面临着一个全球性问题吗？
转载请注明出处。
相关推荐