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VOA慢速英语 2007 0115a

时间:2007-07-05 03:02:30

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This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

Fifty years ago, most people lived in rural areas. But the world has changed. By some point next year, more than half of all people will live in cities, for the first time in history. So says the most recent estimate from the United Nations.


Urban slum1 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

City life is not always a bad thing, but many experts worry about this process of urbanization. A new report from the Worldwatch Institute says it is having a huge effect on human health and the quality of the environment. The environmental research group in Washington released its two thousand seven State of the World report last week.

Of the three billion people who live in cities now, the report says, about one billion live in unplanned settlements. These are areas of poverty, slums2, that generally lack basic services like clean water, or even permanent housing.

The report says more than sixty million people are added to cities and surrounding areas each year, mostly in slums in developing countries.

Molly O'Meara Sheehan led the Worldwatch report. She says the international community has been too slow to recognize the growth of urban poverty. Policymakers, she says, need to increase investments in education, health care and other areas.

The report talks about some successful efforts by local governments and community groups. For example, it says Freetown, Sierra Leone, has established farming within the city limits to meet much of its growing food demands. In Colombia, engineers have created a bus system in Bogota that the report says has helped reduce air pollution and improve quality of life.

Olav Kjorven heads the Environment and Energy Group at the United Nations Development Program. He agrees that the link between urban poverty and the environment is serious. But he says governments also need to consider why people are moving out of rural areas. Climate change, drought, floods -- there are many reasons forcing people to leave, he says.

Olav Kjorven says the two issues of poverty reduction and the environment have existed side by side, but rarely have they connected -- until now. He says governments are starting to understand that environmental collapse3 is not a natural cost of economic development. Instead, he says, it is hurting the possibility for growth.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss4. You can learn more about development issues at www.unsv.com.

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1 slum NxKwF     
n.贫民窟,贫民区;vi.(因好奇而)逛贫民区
参考例句:
  • These children came from a slum area.这些孩子来自贫民窟区。
  • What a wretched existence the people in the slum lead!这个贫民窟里的人们过着多么令人悲惨的生活啊!
2 slums 7a1209bb38ad736618b24dce42cde941     
n.贫民窟,贫民区( slum的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • These slums are an epitaph to the housing policy of the 1960s. 这些贫民窟是20世纪60年代住房政策的遗迹。
  • the poverty and squalor of the slums 贫民窟的贫穷和肮脏
3 collapse aWvyE     
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷
参考例句:
  • The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
  • The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。
4 moss X6QzA     
n.苔,藓,地衣
参考例句:
  • Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
  • He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。

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