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Does the World Face a Future of Water Wars? Throughout history,

游客2023-08-29  23
问题             Does the World Face a Future of Water Wars?
    Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more intense will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource — water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the availability of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

    Less than three percent of the planet’s stock is freshwater, and almost two-thirds of this amount is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers(含水层)too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand — Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that drive tension and conflict over freshwater:
    Using up the water "resource pie". In India, the world’s second-most-populous nation, with over 1,000,000,000 inhabitants, the rate of groundwater withdrawal is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country.
    Although water is a renewable resource, it is not an expanding one. The freshwater available today for more than 6, 000, 000, 000 people is no greater than it was 2, 000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200, 000, 000.(The current U. S. population is 287,000,000.)
    Global agriculture accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, contentious areas — the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates — population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of the Palestinian territory will more than double over the next generation.
    Most experts agree that, because of geography, population pressures and politics, water wars are most likely to erupt in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation. Canadian writer Marq de Villiers notes that "it is now widely accepted that the 1967 Arab-Israeli War had its roots in water politics as much as it did in national territorialism." Speaking in 1996 of regional and global tensions arising from environmental damage, the U. S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher stated that "nowhere is this more evident than in the valleys of the Middle East, where the struggle for water has a direct impact on security and stability. "
    Postel estimates that the almost 2, 400, 000, 000 world population increase projected over the next 35 years will require the water equivalent of 20 Nile Rivers or 97 Colorado Rivers. These astonishing numbers begin to make sense upon consideration that the production of one ton each of grain and rice require approximately 1,000 and 3,000 tons of water, respectively. It is hardly surprising that, of the 34 countries classified as "water-stressed", 32 are net grain importers.
    In his award-winning book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, Thomas Ho-mer-Dixon states that water is the resource most likely to trigger interstate warfare, a sentiment echoed by Jacques Leslie: "Oil belongs to whoever owns the land above it; water complicates ownership."
    Almost 40% of the world’s population resides in the 214 river basins that flow through two or more countries. All but three percent of Egypt’s freshwater comes from the Nile, a river that originates in Ethiopia and makes its way through Sudan before reaching the ancient land of the pharaohs. To date, only the poverty in Ethiopia and Sudan has prevented a water war. What will happen when these two nations commence water-intensive drives toward modernization as well as strive to satisfy the thirst of a projected 139,000,000 more people(the equivalent of four Californias)by mid century? Canadian water and security analyst Steve Lonegran of British Columbia’s Victoria University has stated: "I don’t doubt that if Ethiopia starts building water projects that restrict the flow of the Nile, Egypt will bomb them. "
    De Villiers reminds us that two-thirds of Israel’s water comes from the Golan Heights and the West Bank, territories it gained via military conquest. Noting the restrictions imposed on groundwater withdrawals from the West Bank by Israel, Homer-Dixon states: "These restrictions have been far more severe for Palestinians than for Israeli settlers. They have contributed to the rapid decline in Palestinian agriculture in the region, to the dependence of Palestinians on day laborers within Israel, and, ultimately, to rising frustrations in the Palestinian community. " While numerous political, economic, and ideological factors also must be taken into account, he concludes that "water scarcity" has been a factor in at least one uprising in the West Bank and Gaza territories.
    As citizens of an advanced industrial society, we tend to look for a technological "fix" to problems, and the escalating(逐步增长的)freshwater shortfall is no exception. Cleansing seawater of its salt and mineral content would provide a never-ending supply of potable water. The basic desalinization(脱盐)process, as de Villiers notes, is simple high school chemistry: Water is heated, evaporated to remove salt and other dissolved minerals, and then cooled back to water. However, this distillation method is full of difficulties. Approximately 60% of the 11,000 desalinization plants that collectively account for less than one percent of the world’s freshwater needs are in the Middle East, where fuel is affordable and abundant. Even if the cost and availability of fuel were not problematic, adding plenty of additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would make global warming even worse and increase the evaporation of groundwater. Reverse osmosis — pumping sea water at high pressure through a series of membranes(薄膜)that trap salt and other minerals — is less energy-intensive than distillation, but removes almost everything from seawater, leaving the remaining freshwater susceptible to "fouling".
    The problem as well is how purified water can be cost-effectively transported hundreds of miles inland to agriculture regions. How will desalinization help poor and land-locked Mali, Niger and Chad? The management and costs of desalinization indicate that this process will supply no more than a fraction of humanity’s freshwater needs in the coming years.
    The United Nations estimates that there are currently more "water refugees" than war refugees, and all indications are that the destabilizing consequences of the water-driven migration of people will increase. Poor people forced to leave their homeland are rarely welcomed by equally poverty-stricken individuals who resent the added competition for scarce resources.
    Although it is unlikely that water issues alone will lead to a major war, shortages of this most essential resource will elevate tension in parts of the planet already plagued by deep hatred and suspicion. This, in turn, could increase the chances that some other issue or incident will trigger a conflict.
    Thomas Osborne, a member of the Newfoundland(Canada)Legislature, stated recently that "water is the commodity of the next century, and those who control it could be in a position to control the world’s economy". While arguably an overstatement, will this perspective nonetheless be embraced by individuals and organizations already hostile to water-rich Western nations? The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 demonstrated that Americans are not immune from the hatred of people in far-off lands. Water shortage issues may become an increasingly important component of terrorist motivation and a terrorist agenda in the coming years. [br] The reason that water wars are most likely to erupt in the Middle East could be that
选项 A、the Middle East is poorer than other areas
B、there is national territorialism in that area
C、water struggle impacts on security and stability directly
D、the Middle East has the largest population pressure
答案 C
解析 本段末说在谈到由于环境破坏导致的地区和全球压力时，Warren Christopher指出这一点没有比中东地区更明显的了，在那里，水的斗争会直接影响到安全和稳定问题，[C]项与之相符。原文没有说中东地区贫困，故[A]项与原文无关。原文提到地方主义会是中东战争的原因，但是并没有说地方主义会引发水战争。故[B]项不对。原文提到中东的人口压力是导致水战争的原因之一，但是没有说中东的人口压力最大，[D]项是对原文的错误理解。
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