Title:
Water Shortages Continue to Threaten the World's
Growing Population
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
The lack of clean drinking water is a major problem
worldwide. The World Health Organization says more
than one billion people live in areas where
renewable water resources are not available. The
problem is especially serious in Asia and the
Pacific.
A United Nations report says water availability in
that area is the second lowest in the world, after
Africa.
Nearly seven hundred thousand people in Asia and the
Pacific lack safe drinking water. The U.N. report
notes that the world's poorest countries are also
the ones that use the most water for agriculture.
Agriculture uses about eighty percent of the water
in the Asia-Pacific area. There has also been an
increase in water used for industry. China and India
more than tripled their industrial water use between
nineteen ninety-two and two thousand two.
The lack of clean drinking water around the world
forces millions of people to drink unsafe water.
This leads to an increase in diseases like diarrhea,
the second leading cause of death in children under
five. Floods, droughts, pollution and
climate change have created
even more problems.
The Millennium Development Goals
for two thousand fifteen call for a
fifty percent decrease in the number
of people without safe drinking water
and basic sanitation.
Scientists, governments and aid organizations around
the world are increasing their efforts to meet these
goals. Still, the U.N. says there is much work to be
done. During its yearly World Water Day observance
in March it called on the international community to
work together to solve the water crisis. Researchers
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are
doing just that.
The American and South Korean researchers are
investigating a new technology for turning sea water
into drinking water. The new technology is called
ion concentration polarization. The process uses
electricity to
help separate electrically charged
salt particles from water to
make it drinkable.
The researchers tested their desalination process on
a computer chip the size of a postage stamp.
The chip removed ninety-nine percent of the salt and
other harmful substances from water samples.
So far the method purifies only small amounts of
water. But the researchers say it may someday be
available as a personal water purification product.
And that's the VOA Special English Development
Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
