[外刊选读]拿什么拯救你，生命之源？

发布时间：2010-05-26

作者：华超超

来源于：昂立外语网站

经济学人》近日刊出文章，指出对人类生存最重要的水短缺问题并没有得到足够的重视，相反，人类却把钱财和精力浪费在其他地方。尤其是农业的发展，是人类进一步陷入粮食生长和水流失的两难境地中。但是，方法并不是没有，最重要的是我们是否已经开始重视、开始应对。

The world's most valuable stuff

Mostly because of farming, water is increasingly scarce. Managing it better could help

May 20th 2010

PEOPLE kill each other over diamonds; countries go to war over oil. But the world’s most expensive commodities are worth nothing in the absence of water. Fresh water is essential for life, with no substitute. Although mostly unpriced, it is the most valuable stuff in the world.

unpriced: 未标价的

个人觉得文章开头写得极好，人们为了钻石互相残杀，国家为了石油大开战火。但如果这些所谓的昂贵之物和地球上几乎没有标价的水相比，究竟是哪个更有价值？没有了水，就没有生命，没有生命，所谓财富又有何用？

句子的结构非常简单，为了…杀人，因为…发生战争，仅用一介词over就涵盖了。

Nature has decreed that the supply of water is fixed. Meanwhile demand rises inexorably as the world’s population increases and enriches itself. Homes, factories and offices are sucking up ever more. But it is the planet’s growing need for food (and the water involved in producing crops and meat) that matters most. Farming accounts for

70% of withdrawals.

inexorable：这里指不可阻挡，无法改变的

划线句指人口增长，同时人们的生活变得富足

Our special report this week looks at the increasingly visible consequences of the rising demand for water. Few of the world’s great rivers that run through grain-growing areas now reach the sea all the year round or, if they do, they do so as a trickle. Less obvious, though even more serious, are the withdrawals from underground aquifers, which are hidden from sight but big enough to produce changes in the Earth’s gravitational field that can be monitored by NASA’s satellites in space. Water tables are now falling in many parts of the world, including America, India and China.

aquifer：含水土层。这里这句话是指水分从原本地下的含水土层流失。

gravitational field：引力场

water table：地下水位。这句话是说地下水位也在不断降低。

世界上，整整一年间仅几条流经谷物生长区的大河能最终汇入海洋，即便如此，这些最终流入大海的部分也不过是涓涓细流。

So far the world has been spared a true water war, though the belligerency in Darfur comes close to being one, and competition for water can sometimes bring rivals together as well as drive them apart. But since over 60% of the world’s population lives in a river basin shared by two or more countries, the scope for squabbles is plain. Even if acute water shortages were to become widespread in just one country—India, say, or China—they could lead to mass migration and fighting.

belligerency：交战状态

river basin：江河流域

squabble：口角，争论 scope for squabbles：发生争论的机会

拿印度和中国来举例应该有多种原因，比如庞大的人口和相对不够发达的国情。

Although the supply of water cannot be increased, mankind can use what there is better—in four ways. One is through the improvement of storage and delivery, by creating underground reservoirs, replacing leaking pipes, lining earth-bottomed canals, irrigating plants at their roots with just the right amount of water, and so on. A second route focuses on making farming less thirsty—for instance by growing newly bred, perhaps genetically modified, crops that are drought-resistant or higher-yielding. A third way is to invest in technologies to take the salt out of sea water and thus increase supply of the fresh stuff. The fourth is of a different kind: unleash the market on water-users and let the price mechanism bring supply and demand into balance. And once water is properly priced, trade will encourage well-watered countries to make water-intensive goods, and arid ones to make those that are water-light.

irrigate：灌溉

unleash：解开束缚

这里文章给出了四种缓解缺水危机的可行方法。个人觉得如果第三种方法能够实现的话，那么供人类使用的水源将成百倍的增加，应当会成为最快速的方法。但问题是，即便世界上所有的海水区也变成了淡水，如果人们没有节水意识，也总有枯竭的一天。所以重要的还是地球上的“人”怎么看待这个问题，怎样合理使用水。因此下文也提到了这一点，继续实行的其实是第一个方法。

下文是对以上四种方法的分析：

Solutions on tap（现成的，马上可以用的）

All four approaches have a part to play in the solution, but none is likely to end the over-drawing of water at all quickly. For instance, although crop yields may be improved by new technologies and even new breeds (especially following this week’s genome advance), no one has yet managed to produce plants that offer dramatically more crop per drop. Without such a breakthrough, growing more crops inevitably means losing more water, since each extra plant transpires water vapour into the atmosphere during photosynthesis.

Desalination looks more hopeful, since new technologies are being developed and prices are falling. But it is still expensive, especially in terms of energy use, which is why at present it provides only 0.4% of the world’s fresh water. It will undoubtedly add to the supply of drinking water, of the ultra-pure water required for some industrial processes, even of irrigation for high-value crops, especially if grown for export. But it won’t solve most farmers’ water problems.

transpire：蒸发

photosynthesis：光合作用

desalination：脱盐

Liquid assets

As for the market, when it approaches water it meets all sorts of obstacles: water is difficult to move, difficult to measure, difficult to price and often difficult to charge for, since many people think it should be free. Even in arid market economies where every drop is precious, the price of water seldom reflects scarcity. Trading in water rights may one day bring order to the 20m well-users in India, but not in time to feed the 1.4 billion Indian mouths expected by 2025.

arid：贫瘠的，干旱的

If that is to be done, it will be done largely by managing demand. （从本文看来，似乎第一种方式权衡下来最可行，或者利最大）This is already beginning to happen in parts of both India and China, where farmers are learning how to measure the water they pump, how to use it to greatest effect and thus how to sustain aquifer levels. The urgent need now is to spread their principles and practices at home and to other countries.

Even if the world manages to limit depletion, many water-related problems will persist. About 1 billion people are still without access to a decent water supply, while others suffer from flooding, pollution and poor sanitation. Yet if man wants to solve these problems, he can. He has applied far more money and know-how to issues far less important than the shortage of water. And if he does tackle them successfully, the big causes of human suffering—disease and poverty—will be automatically alleviated. Investing more thought and cash in the better use of the world’s most valuable commodity is surely worthwhile.

depletion：耗尽，枯竭

sanitation：公共卫生（设施）

alleviate：缓解

正如上文所说，如果人类真的想要解决这些问题，他们就一定可以。他们已经在其他问题上花费了比解决缺水问题多得多的钱财和脑力，而这些问题其实远远没有缺水那么重要。言下之意：人们应该更多关注与我们生命息息相关的“水”，并且，只要我们重视了，我们也终将能找到解决方法。