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Sustainable Earth Vocabulary and Expressions stagger levee choke off a hard sell civil engineering l
Sustainable Earth Vocabulary and Expressions stagger levee choke off a hard sell civil engineering l
admin
2018-06-10
60
问题
Sustainable Earth
Vocabulary and Expressions
stagger levee choke off a hard sell
civil engineering low-lying infrastructure floodplain
Sustainable Earth
Rio +20 shows how shoring up natural ecosystems can help protect us from Mother Nature’s fury.
Natural disasters are a fact of life.
There’s no controlling Mother Nature, and her wrath can, at times, be staggering. Last year, natural disasters—from droughts in Africa and Russia to typhoons and massive flooding in Thailand—caused a record $ 378 billion worth of damage.
The indications are that the situation will get worse, not better. Climate change is likely to make weather patterns more extreme. There’s no ignoring the problem, but there remains a critical question: What protects us better, human engineering or natural landscapes? There’s a natural human urge to rely on the things we make, but the lessons of the past decade have led in a different direction.
Often, the great works of civil engineering that we built as insurance against disaster had the opposite effect. Hurricane Katrina is a great example. Over the past century, the levees built to protect low-lying New Orleans choked off the natural wetlands that once served as a buffer between the Big Easy and the Gulf of Mexico. Erosion has wiped out 1, 900 square miles of wetlands since the 1930s.
Natural Defenses
Researchers estimate that every 2. 7 square miles of wetlands reduces storm surge by a foot. So when the hurricane hit—with the area’s natural buffers mostly gone—the resulting flooding overwhelmed the city’s elaborate man-made defenses, leading to the worst natural disaster to hit the U. S. in decades.
In Katrina’s case, environmental degradation played a direct role in turning a bad storm into a total catastrophe. But in other places, it’s the sheer complexity of the human-built environment that makes it more prone to catastrophic failure. Take last year’s tsunami on the northern coast of Japan. It was bad enough by itself, but it was made worse when it set off a chain reaction that caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
That’s why the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development will take a look at disaster preparedness from a different angle. Is it possible to use "green" methods to avert catastrophe?
"The natural infrastructure provided by ecosystems is often more locally accessible and less expensive to maintain than human-made, or ’ gray’ infrastructure," UN Environmental Program Director Ibrahim Thiaw said recently. " Healthy ecosystems are the best ’ insurance cover’ for those who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and ultimately provide multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits regardless of whether a disaster occurs or not. "
Blueprint for Action
Combining disaster preparedness with sustainable development may be a hard sell, but successful efforts are already under way. Even the Netherlands—one of the most engineered countries in the world—has instituted a program to make " Room for the River," re-establishing the floodplains of its rivers.
Can sustainable development plans go hand in hand with disaster prevention? We’ll only know for sure in time.
选项
答案
Rio+20 shows how shoring up natural ecosystems can help protect us from Mother Nature’s fury. There’s no controlling Mother Nature and her wrath sometimes can be staggering. Climate change is likely to make weather patterns more extreme. Natural disasters are a fact of life. The great works of civil engineering that we built as insurance against disaster had the opposite effect. Ecosystems provide natural defenses against natural disasters. Researchers estimate that every 2. 7 square miles of wetlands reduces storm surge by a foot. It is possible to use "green" methods to avert catastrophe. The natural infrastructure provided by ecosystems is often more locally accessible and less expensive to maintain than human-made infrastructure. Healthy ecosystems are the best " insurance cover". Combining disaster preparedness with sustainable development may be a hard sell, but successful efforts are already under way. We’ll only know for sure in time whether sustainable development plans go hand in hand with disaster prevention or not.
解析
“里约+20”可持续发展大会上宣称:自然生态系统支撑可以保护人类免遭大自然母亲的惩罚。大自然母亲无法控制她的怒火,气候变化导致更极端的天气。自然灾害成了生活的常态,然而生态系统可以抵御自然灾害。自然生态跟人类基础设施相比,更能应对自然灾害,还可健康地成本低廉运行。将预防自然灾害和可持续发展结合实属不易,对其成效,我们将拭目以待。
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