用水缺乏中东国家面临危机

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。”