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  3. This week and next, governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are gathering in Mexico City at the Wo

This week and next, governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are gathering in Mexico City at the Wo

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问题     This week and next, governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are gathering in Mexico City at the World Water Forum to discuss the legacy of global Mulhollandism in water—and to chart a new course.
    They could hardly have chosen a better location. Water is being pumped out of the aquifer on which Mexico City stands at twice the rate of replenishment. The result: the city is subsiding at the rate of about half a meter every decade. You can see the consequences in the cracked cathedrals, the tilting Palace of Arts and the broken water and sewerage pipes.
    Every region of the world has its own variant of the water crisis story. The mining of groundwaters for irrigation has lowered the water table in parts of India and Pakistan by 30 meters in the past three decades. As water goes down, the cost of pumping goes up, undermining the livelihoods of poor farmers.
    In China, urbanization and rapid growth has lifted millions of people out of poverty. It has also left a water crisis of epic proportions. The Hai-Huai-Yellow river basin tells its own story. More than 80 percent of river lengths are chronically polluted. The basin is home to more than 400 million people and about one half of the rural poor. It produces more than half of China’s wheat and corn. And it is running out of water. Current use exceeds river flow by a third, leading to another case of groundwater overexploitation.
    What is driving the global water crisis? Physical availability is part of the problem. Unlike oil or coal, water is an infinitely renewable resource, but it is available in a finite quantity. With water use increasing at twice the rate of population growth, the amount available per person is shrinking— especially in some of the poorest countries.
    Challenging as physical scarcity may be in some countries, the real problems in water go deeper. The 20th-century model for water management was based on a simple idea: that water is an infinitely available free resource to be exploited, dammed or diverted without reference to scarcity or sustainability.
    Across the world, water-based ecological systems—rivers, lakes and watersheds—have been taken beyond the frontiers of ecological sustainability by policy makers who have turned a blind eye to the consequences of over-exploitation.
    We need a new model of water management for the 21st century. What does that mean? For starters, we have to stop using water like there’s no tomorrow—and that means using it more efficiently at levels that do not destroy our environment. The buzzword at the Mexico Water forum is "integrated water resource management." What it means is that governments need to manage the private demand of different users and manage this precious resource in the public interest.
    There is another, equally profound challenge. We have to strengthen the rights and the voice of the poor—and it means putting social justice at the center of water management.
Which of the following is the main reason of the author’s advocacy of strengthening the rights and voice of the poor?
选项 A、The poor is and will be the main victim in water crisis.
B、Most of the developing countries face water crisis while the developed ones do not.
C、Water management is a system which guides the poor how to efficiently utilize water.
D、Water crisis will lead to more competition between the rich and the poor.
答案A
解析 属信息推断题。原文中所列举的饱受水资源危机困扰的国家都是发展中国家，但是也不能说发达国家完全没有这样的问题，故选项B错误。文中并没表述水资源管理机制就是教导穷人如何高效地利用水资源，故选项C错误。选项D陈述了与题干相关的事实，但并没有点明要给予穷人更多的权利和话语权的原因。作者在文中多次表达了水资源危机的最终、最主要的受害者就是贫穷人口，因为其不具有较强的经济能力，多数以务农为职业，故水对于他们来说意味着一切，所以选项A符合题意，为正确答案。
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