Reading
43
Section A
The role of governments in environmental management is difficult but inescapable.
Sometimes, the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often,
however, governments act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidise the
exploitation and consumption of natural resources. A whole range of policies, from farm-
price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental damage and (often) make no
economic sense. Scrapping them offers a two-fold bonus: a cleaner environment and a
more efficient economy. Growth and environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if
politicians have the courage to confront the vested interest that subsi-dies create.
SectionB
No activity affects more of the earth’s surface than farming. It shapes a third of the planet’s
land area, not counting Antarctica, and the proportion Is rising. World food output per head
has risen by 4 per cent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in
yields from land already in cultivation, but also because more land has been brought under
the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding,
and a doubling in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Section C
All these activities may have damaging environmental impacts. For example, land clearing
for agriculture is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilisers and
pesticides may contaminate water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment
of fallow periods tend to exacerbate soil erosion; and the spread of mono-Culture and use
of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old
varieties of food plants which might have provided some insurance against pests or
diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land In both rich and poor
countries. The United States, where the most careful measurements have been done,
discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmtand as losing topsoil at a rate likely to
diminish the soil’s productivity. The country subse-uently embarked upon a program to
convert 11 per cent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is
vanishing much faster than in America.
Dostları ilə paylaş: