用水缺乏中东国家面临危机

At Cairo's posh Gazeera Club, workers leave the showers running as they sit nearby drinking tea and chatting. Large quantities of water pour down the drain as water pipes around the city and its suburbs run dry.

在开罗豪华的吉齐拉健身俱乐部里，工作人员打开淋浴的水龙头，然后坐在近处喝茶聊天，水就这样大量地流走了。而同时在开罗其它地区和市郊，水管已经干枯。

For inhabitants of Cairo’s poor neighborhoods, water only infrequently arrives via government pipes. In order to cook and stay hydrated, says resident Hossam Abdel Razaq, housewives trek to a local water dealer and buy the precious liquid for 25 cents. When water does briefly flow, he adds, kids run to the faucets to drink.

住在开罗贫困社区佐卡·克埃尔布拉克的一名居民拉扎克抱怨说，大部分时间，政府水管已经不能再供应用水到他们居住的地区了。他说，家庭主妇必须走到当地卖水商人的店铺，从那里购买珍贵的用水。拉扎克说，他的地区完全得不到供水。每次轮到仅有的五分钟供水时间里，孩子们冲到水龙头喝水。他还说，妇女们要到卖水的商店，每次化两角五分美金买水。他们买回家的水只能作为烹饪和饮水之用。

A regional problem

Due to increasing populations, climate change, poor infrastructure and inefficient use of resources, serious water shortages are threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the Middle East.

In Egypt, government statistics indicate the country uses 55 billion cubic meters of water per year, 87 percent of which comes from the River Nile. But conflict with neighboring states downriver, however, is creating tension and could exacerbate the crisis.

埃及政府的数据资料显示，埃及每年消耗用水达5百50亿立方米，其中百分之87来自尼罗河。埃及和尼罗河下游邻国之间的冲突，可能造成关系紧张而导致缺水危机更为恶化。

Governments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Southern Sudan argue that they should get a larger share of the Nile's waters, but Egypt and Sudan insist that a British colonial agreement gives them the right to use most of the Nile's waters.

这些邻国，除了埃塞俄比亚之外，其它如肯尼亚，乌干达和南苏丹都说，他们应该分得尼罗河更多的用水。而埃及和苏丹都坚持，根据英国殖民地协议规定，他们享有尼罗河大部分的水源。

Omar Ashour, who teaches political science at the University of Exeter in Britain, says Egypt is paying a price for years of benign neglect of southern neighbors.

在英国埃克塞特大学教政治学的奥玛尔·阿绍尔说，埃及正为历年来对南方邻邦非恶意的忽视，付出代价。

"What we're harvesting now is decades of bad foreign policy when it comes to the central African and southern neighbors," he says. "During Mubarak's time there was the complete ignoring of development projects, of cooperation, and there was this superiority-inferiority complex reflected in foreign policy towards neighbors in the south, especially Ethiopia, Rwanda, southern Sudan and Sudan. There was this assumption that they were allies and friends during [President Gamal Abdel] Nasser's time and that [would] remain the situation regardless of how Egypt treated them."

他说：“我们现在得到的，是几十年来对中非洲和南方邻邦错误外交政策的后果。在穆巴拉克时代，对开发计划，以及合作关系的全盘忽略，以及自我优越和自卑的混合情结反映于对南方邻邦的外交政策之中，特别是对埃塞俄比亚，卢旺达，南苏丹和苏丹。埃及一直认定，这些国家从纳赛尔总统时期就是埃及的朋友和盟邦，不论埃及如何对待他们，他们总是不会改变的。”

Although Ashour notes that youth leaders of the January revolution met with presidents of both Ethiopia and Uganda in a goodwill gesture to repair strained ties, water, he stresses, remains "pretty much one of the most sensitive national security and foreign policy issues for Egypt."

The first major city to go dry?

Across the Red Sea in war-torn Yemen, residents of the capital Sana'a say government water comes to their houses "so infrequently” they are "forced to pay to haul it in from outside the city by truck."

战乱中挣扎的也门，在埃及红海对岸。也门首都萨纳的居民告诉美国之音记者说，政府供应的用水经常中断。他们经常被迫付钱，使用卡车把水从别处运来。

United Nations Development Program statistics also indicate that levels of Yemen's 21 main aquifers are falling by seven meters per year on average, leading some experts to speculate the country will be completely out of potable water within five to 10 years.

联合国开发计划的资料也指出，也门全国21处含水层，平均每年下陷七米，导致一些专家认为，在五年至十年之内，也门将无水可以取用。Hakim Almasmari, Editor in Chief of the Yemen Post, says "less than 10% of the country gets its water from the government" and that “Sana'a could be the first capital in the world to run out of water." He blames poor infrastructure and the culture of Yemen's ubiquitous narcotic qat tree for the problem.

也门邮报总编辑哈吉姆·阿尔马斯马里认为，全也门获得政府供水的人数，不到全国人口的十分之一。同时，也门的萨纳，将可能是全世界第一个无水可用的首都。他认为于基础设施的不足以及也门人普遍种植属于麻醉毒品的卡特树，是主要因素。

"First of all, there's no real infrastructure that can help in using the rain-water appropriately, and so everything that is being used in Yemen is the underground water," he says. "Seventy percent of that water goes to qat plantations, and Yemenis seem to be growing it more and more every day."

他说：“首先，根本没有真正的基础设施，可以适当地协助雨水的利用。因此，所有水源都来自地下水。而百分之70的地下水都消耗于卡特树的栽种。卡特树是一种毒品。也门人越种越多，好像每天都在种。”

To the north in Lebanon and Syria, where it rains more frequently, poor infrastructure prevents capture of considerable quantities of rainwater, which ends up in the sea. Professor Louis Hobeika, who teaches economics at Lebanon's Notre Dame University, also points out that water is priced inexpensively, which encourages people to squander it.

位于北方的黎巴嫩和叙利亚雨量较大，但也是因为贫乏基础设施，让雨水流向大海而无法留住。黎巴嫩诺特丹大学的经济学教授路易斯·霍贝卡也指出，水价低廉，使人们任意挥霍。

"People abuse the consumption of water because the price is low, and there is no metering system," he says. "For example, in Lebanon we don't have meters in the use of water. We pay an annual fee and it's independent of how much water you consume, which is frankly ridiculous. It pushes people to over-consume and to waste it."

他说：“由于水费低廉，人们就肆意消耗用水。再加上缺乏计算水量的方法。例如我们在黎巴嫩，就没有计算用水数量的设备。不论消耗了多少，我们每年只付费一次。坦白说，这种情形很可笑。它鼓励人们浪费用水。”

An exacerbating factor

Although Lebanon and Israel have a history of quarreling over water from southern Lebanon's Litani River, Hobeika stresses that bad political relations between most countries in the region tend to exacerbate the crisis wherever it persists.

霍贝卡强调，中东地区大部分国家之间的政治关系恶劣，也恶化了缺水危机。他指出，黎巴嫩和以色列之间就为了黎巴嫩南部利塔尼河水的使用，一直存在着历史性的争执。

"Economic and political relationships among countries in the Middle East is usually bad and, therefore, water is one of the sources of conflict in the region," he says. "The water of the Litani River in Lebanon is one of those important examples of current and especially potential conflicts between us and Israel."

霍贝卡继续说：“中东各国之间的政治经济关系不好，因此，水问题成为这个区域的冲突原因之一。水本来是够用的，不过各国在如何合理引水，以避免不必要纠纷的问题上有冲突。黎巴嫩的利塔尼河就是黎巴嫩和以色列之间目前冲突和潜在冲突的一个重要例子。”