试题预览
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0320/p14s01-sten.html
Passage 12
阅读导引（适用于M10）
世界水日是提醒公众重视水资源问题的一个特殊的日子。在这个日子里，我们可以意识到：向人们提供纯净饮用水的切实努力和世界范围内对于水问题的认识提高。世界水日的设立能够帮助我们在水资源问题上，做得更出色。本文将围绕世界水日对当今世界水短缺情况作一个介绍。
阅读欣赏
On World Water Day, a Mighty Global Thirst
There are seven oceans on the earth. But they contain saltwater, unfit for human consumption. Only about 2.5 percent of the world's water is drinkable. That still would be an ample supply if it were clean and available where needed.
It's not. Today some 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack adequate waste water treatment. As a result, contaminated water supplies are blamed for the worldwide deaths of 1.8 million children, according to the United Nation's Human Development Report for 2006. That's 4,900 children per day under 5 years old.
What's more, children worldwide miss 443 million days of school each year because of water-related illnesses. The UN also estimates that half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.
Beyond that, millions of people (almost always women) spend hours per day carrying water up to several miles for their family's needs because no source is close at hand.
In December 1992, the UN sponsored World Water Day, observed on March 22, to raise awareness of the need to protect and improve access to clean water supplies.
“When the well is dry, then we know the worth of water,” said Benjamin Franklin, long before today's water challenges.
It's clear that competition for water “will become more and more fierce in the decades ahead,” said Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Program in its 2006 report. “Water is the ultimate fugitive resource, crossing borders through rivers, lakes, and aquifers – a fact that points to the potential for cross-border tensions in water-stressed regions.”
Growing populations are draining water resources. And climate change is expected to worsen the problem as it changes rainfall patterns. A new UN study shows that as temperatures have warmed, the world's glaciers have been decreasing at accelerating rates and may disappear entirely within a few decades. China, India, and the West Coast
 试题下载地址
|
浏览更多英语试题，请访问 
|