[00:02.02]Unit 22 Environmental Protection
[00:06.60]Lesson 3 Unnatural Disasters
[00:10.92]Hell and High Water
[00:13.46]The last few years have been the worst period
[00:16.21]on record for environmental disasters
[00:19.22]and experts are predicting far worse to come.
[00:22.35]Jin Li reports.
[00:24.95]A In the last decade, floods, droughts,
[00:28.71]windstorms, earthquakes, typhoons,
[00:31.69]volcanic eruptions and froese fires
[00:34.35]have become increasingly common.
[00:36.53]There has been disastrous flooding in Asia,
[00:39.73]Africa, America and Oceania.
[00:42.78]Even prospers Europe has sufferd and
[00:45.43]and large areas from the Britain
[00:47.37]to Germany have all been down the water.
[00:49.77]Storms have been getting worse everywhere too,
[00:52.73]with a growing number of hurricanes
[00:54.39]hitting the US,
[00:55.93]the Caribbean and Central America.
[00:58.28]Drought has affected large areas of Africa
[01:01.00]for years and many other zones
[01:03.10]are becoming drier.
[01:04.54]For example, the Yellow River once notorious
[01:07.50]for flooding the Chinese landscape,
[01:09.73]failed to reach the sea at all
[01:11.73]on 226 days, in 1997.
[01:15.24]A number of nations have already been
[01:17.81]in armed conflict over water,
[01:20.74]and drought in the West of the US
[01:23.12]has resulted in enormous forest fires.
[01:25.27]