Countries must learn to share water fairly if they are to prevent warring over water as population growth and climate change make it ever more scarce.

Farming uses 70 percent of the fresh water taken from the world’s lakes and rivers and need from farms is set to increase by 14 percent in the next 30 years.

Water conflicts can happen in water-stressed areas among local communities and between countries. The lack of instruments for water sharing exacerbates already difficult conditions. In the absence of clear rules, things will not be organized or arranged in order and power plays an important role.

While humans drink between 2 and 5 litres of water a day, it takes 1,000-2,000 litres to produce a kilogram of wheat and up to 15,000 litres to produce a kilo of grain-fed beef.

The daily consumption of water per person is a thousand times more than the consumption through drinking.

Already 1.1 billion people lack clean water and, with the world’s population set to grow from 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2025, 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by then. Global warming will exacerbate the problem, especially in poor, dry areas.

To improve cross-border cooperation on water use, the 10 countries on the Nile are negotiating (商定) a water-sharing agreement which the Food and Agriculture Organisation  hopes will be a model for other areas where the scarce water can be shared out peacefully.

61. What’s the passage mainly about?

A. Water conflicts can arise in poor and dry areas.

B. Countries must learn to share water fairly.

C. What caused water conflicts.

D. Water consumption is increasing.

62. Which of the following may be the reason for water conflicts?

A. The lack of clear rules.

B. That farming consumes too much water.

C. That too much water has been wasted.

D. Environmental pollution.

63. The underlined word “exacerbates” (in Paragraph 3) probably means “           ”.

A. makes larger

B. makes smaller

C. makes better

D. makes worse

64. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A. Farming uses 70 percent of the fresh water now.

B. It takes about 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of grain-fed beef.

C. The 10 countries on the Nile have reached a water-sharing agreement.

D. 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025.

第四部分 任务型阅读 (共10小题；每小题1分, 满分10分)

    请认真阅读下列短文, 并根据所读内容在文章后表格的空格处里填人最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格填1个单词。

There’re seven oceans across most of the earth's surface. But they contain saltwater, unfit for human consumption. Only a tiny part of the world's water – about 2.5 percent – is drinkable. That still would be an enough supply if it were clean and available where needed. However, it's not.

Today some 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack proper waste water treatment. As a result, polluted water supplies are blamed for the worldwide deaths of 1.8 million children, according to the United Nation's Human Development Report for 2006.That means 4,900 children under 5 years old died per day.

What's more, children worldwide miss 443 million days of school each year because of water-related illnesses. The UN also estimates that half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.

Beyond that, millions of people (almost always women) in different parts of the world spend hours per day carrying water up to several miles for their family's needs because no source is close at hand.

Since 1992, the UN has sponsored(倡议) World Water Day, observed on March 22, to raise awareness of the need to protect and improve access to clean water supplies. 

"When the well is dry, then we know the worth of water," said Benjamin Franklin, long before today's water challenges.

It's clear that competition for water "will intensify(加剧) in the decades ahead," said Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Program in its 2006 report. "Water is the fundamental resource, crossing borders through rivers, lakes – a fact that points to the potential for cross-border tensions in water-stressed regions."

Growing populations, are using up water resources, and climate change is expected to worsen the problem as it changes rainfall patterns. A new UN study shows that as temperatures have gone up, the world's glaciers(冰川) have been decreasing at fast rates and may disappear entirely within a few decades. China, India, and the West Coast of the United States are among populous places that rely on glaciers for their water supply. Glaciers feed some of the world's great rivers, which serve billions of people.

One of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, established in 2000, is to cut in half by the year 2015 the population unable to reach or afford safe drinking water. Achieving that goal is "critically important," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. "When you look at the health and development challenges faced by the poorest of the world's population, the common sticking point often turns out to be water." Governments and private groups are working hard to solve the problem as well.