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本文为大家推荐的是来源于华盛顿邮报的一篇文章——World Bank: The way climate change is really going

to hurt us is through water.作者是Chris Mooney.

文章内容：

As India, the world’s second-most populous country, reels from an intense

drought, the World Bank has released a new report finding that perhaps the most

severe impact of a changing climate could be the effect on water supplies.

The most startling finding? The report suggests that by 2050, an inadequate

supply of water could knock down economic growth in some parts of the world a

figure as high as 6 percent of GDP, “sending them into sustained negative

growth.” Regions facing this risk — which can at least partly be averted by

better water management, the document notes — include not only much of Africa

but also India, China and the Middle East.

“When we look at any of the major impacts of climate change, they one way

or another come through water,” said Richard Damania, a lead economist at the

bank and the lead author of the report, on a call with reporters Tuesday. “So it

will be no exaggeration to claim that climate change is really in fact about

hydrological change.”

Climate change hits water supplies in multiple ways. Warm temperatures can

cause more evaporation of water from landscapes, while changes in precipitation

can lead to both more intense individual downpours but also swings into drought

conditions. The threat from all this is not just to what people drink but what

they eat: The human activity that consumes the most water is agriculture.

And then, there’s sea-level rise: It can push into coastal aquifers, as is

happening today in the state of Florida, and thus threaten to make them more

saline and less usable for human needs. So it isn’t only surface waters that may

be depleted by climate swings, but also groundwater.

The World Bank report says that 1.6 billion people on Earth already live in

nations that are subject to water scarcity. Depending on the precise definition

of the concept, other research has put that number even higher, finding that 4

billion live in regions that face conditions of “severe” water scarcity during

at least some part of the year. Using its own definition, the World Bank fears

the number of people living with potential water threats will double over the

next two decades.

The problem will be exacerbated by greater populations overall, and more

demand for water due to increased needs in the electricity generation and

agricultural sectors. But the impacts, the study found, will also be very

uneven, with little projected economic harm to North America or Europe from

water supply changes.

“Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will converge

upon a world where the demand for water rises exponentially, while supply

becomes more erratic and uncertain,” the report says.

It’s not the case that the world as a whole will have inadequate fresh

water — it’s that some places will be fine but others won’t have enough, and

there’s not much means of mass water redistribution over long distances. Rather,

grapping with these looming water scarcity problems has to occur in specific

regions, where it will be important to address water waste, misalloaction, and

efficiency in water use — in other words, using the same amount of water for

more diverse purposes or needs.

That’s a crucial task, the report finds, due to staggering projected

increases in fresh water demand. The report finds that in the next 30 years,

“the global food system will require between 40 to 50 percent more water;

municipal and industrial water demand will increase by 50 to 70 percent; the

energy sector will see water demand increase by 85 percent; and the environment,

already the residual claimant, may receive even less.”

And when water shortages happen, the poor will inevitably be hit the

hardest — when it comes to both food and drinking water, because they may not be

able to purchase supplies from elsewhere to get them through hard times.

The science and policy of environmental issues.Sign upWhat’s most new about

the report, perhaps, is tying the problem of potential future water scarcity –

which has been already much discussed in the past — to particularly dire

economic impacts. “We will have expanding water deficits. When you do the

analysis, it turns out that economic growth is a thirsty business,” Damania

said.

The report finds that water, or the lack thereof, can damage economies in

multiple ways — ranging from cutting down business efficiencies, to harming the

health of citizens, to spurring natural disasters.

And the problem won’t be steady or chronic — there are likely to be sudden

crises spurred by droughts or extreme weather events, such as floods. These,

again, will hit unstable regions the hardest — and take a major economic toll.

“When we have poverty, when we have division, when we have polarization, you add

to that a water shock, something like a drought, this becomes a threat

multiplier,” Damania said.

If there’s good news, it’s that the report does find that resilience

measures, such as low-hanging-fruit improvements to water infrastructure, can

reduce the risks in many regions. “Some cities, even in arid areas, lose more

water through leaking pipes than they deliver to households,” the report

notes.

（原文：https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/03/world-bank-the-way-climate-change-is-really-going-to-hurt-us-is-through-water/）

以上就是文章全文了，讨论的是环境和能源话题，小伙伴们可以先练习阅读文章，归纳文章的论点和中心思想以及文章中作者使用的分析论技巧，最后就是尝试着写作。

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