韩健带你读外刊——World heading for catastrophe over natural disasters

Pakistaniscrossafloodedstreetfollowingheavyrain...





Pakistanis cross a flooded street followingheavy rain on the outskirts of Peshawar on 4 April 2016. Photograph: AMajeed/AFP/Getty Images

【导读】继续发一篇全球环境变化的文章，这个话题继去年12月底巴黎会议之后一直是个热点，其重要性不言而喻，即便阅读理解考查不到，一些语句的积累也有助于写作的语料形成。本文指出，环境气候变化的治理不仅仅要体现在事后的补救，更重要的是防患于未然。

The world’s failure to prepare for natural disasters will have “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change fuels a huge increase in catastrophic droughts and floods and the humanitarian crises that follow, the UN’s head of disaster planning has warned.

【注1】首段点明主题，随着全球气候变化恶劣，自然灾害的影响会越来越严重。主干是Theworld’s failure (to prepare…) + will have + bad consequences + as引导时间状语从句。that follow是定语从句，修饰先行词humanitarian crises。

Last year, earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and landslides left 22,773 people dead, affected 98.6 million others and caused $66.5bn (£47bn) of economic damage. Yet the international community spends less than half of one per cent of the global aid budget on mitigating the risks posed by such hazards.

【注2】第二段介绍了去年全球自然灾害造成的伤亡与财产损失，并通过yet转折，突出国际社会对降低灾害发生的风险方面所做的不足。第二句抓住spend+ sth. + on 结构，其中posed by such hazards是过去分词短语后置，修饰risks。

Robert Glasser, a risk expert, said: “If you see that we’re already spending huge amounts of money and are unable to meet the humanitarian need – and then you overlay that with not just population growth … [but] you put climate change on top of that, and the knock-on effects with respect to food security and conflict and new viruses like the Zika virus or whatever – you realise that the only way we’re going to be able to deal with these trends is by getting out ahead of them and focusing on reducing disaster risk.”

(http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/24/world-heading-for-catastrophe-over-natural-disasters-risk-expert-warns)

【注3】第三段引用专家的话，说明自然灾害是由于各方面因素导致，因此尽管花了大量资源仍无法获得满意的效果，因此唯一的出路在于如何降低风险发生的几率。引号里其实就一句话，即Ifyou see …, you realise that…。that之后结构是theonly way is by getting…and focusing…，而we’regoing to…trends是定语从句，修饰先行词way。

【注4】破折号里面是插入语，可以视作if从句中的补充。

词汇巩固：

1. head for 前往

2. catastrophe  n. 灾难

3. failure to 未能

4. inconceivably  adv. 不可思议地

5. fuel  v. 激起，刺激

6. droughts and floods  旱涝

7. humanitarian  adj. 人道主义的

8. landslide  n. 山崩，滑坡

9. mitigate  v. 减轻，缓和

10. hazard  n. 危险

11. overlay  v. 置于……之上；在……覆盖一层

12. knock-on effect 连锁反应

HJ原创译文：

联合国减灾计划署发出警告，全球气候变化明显加剧了旱涝灾害的发生以及随之而来的人道主义危机，而我们世界并未对此做好充分准备，其后果将会极其糟糕。

去年，全球发生的地震、洪涝、热浪及土地滑坡灾害共造成22773人死亡，9860万人受其影响，经济损失达665亿美元（约470亿英镑）。然而，国际社会用于降低此类风险发生的资金比例甚至不到全球灾害援助预算的0.5%。

风险专家罗伯特·格拉色指出：“如果你发现，花了大量的资金之后仍未能满足人道主义需求，再加上人口增长、气候变化以及由此产生的食品安全、民族冲突和诸如寨卡的新病毒等一系列因素，那么你就会认识到，应对这些趋势的唯一方法，就是防患于未然，对如何降低灾害发生风险加大关注力度。”

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