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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 574
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 574 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 574
READING PASSAGE – 1
For Want of a Drink
A. WHEN the word water appears in print these days, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, as is said, is the new oil: a resource long squandered, now growing expensive and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable demands. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea. Climate change threatens to make the problems worse. Everyone must use less water if famine, pestilence and mass migration are not to sweep the globe.
As it is, wars are about to break out between countries squabbling over dams and rivers. The language is often overblown and the remedies are sometimes ill conceived, but the basic message is not wrong. Water is indeed scarce in many places, and will grow scarcer. Bringing supply and demand into equilibrium will be painful, and political disputes may increase in number and intensify in their capacity to cause trouble. To carry on with present practices would indeed be to invite disaster.
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B. The troubles start with the number of people using the stuff. When, 50 years ago, the world’s population was about 2.5 billion, worries about water supply affected relatively few people. Both drought and hunger existed, as they have throughout history, but most people could be fed without irrigated farming. Then the green revolution, in an inspired combination of new crop breeds, fertilisers and water, made possible a huge rise in the population.
The number of people on Earth rose to 6 billion in 2000 and is heading for 9 billion in 2050. The area under irrigation has doubled and the amount of water drawn for farming has tripled. The proportion of people living in countries chronically short of water, which stood at 8% (500m) at the turn of the 21st century, is set to rise to 45% (4 billion) by 2050. And about 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night, partly for lack of water to grow food.
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C. People in temperate climates where the rain falls moderately all the year round may not realise how much water is needed for farming. In Britain farming takes only 3% of all water withdrawals. In the United States, by contrast, 41% goes for agriculture irrigation. For the world as a whole, agriculture accounts for almost 70%. Farmers’ increasing demand for water is caused not only by the growing number of mouths to be fed but also by people’s desire for better-tasting, more interesting food.
Unfortunately, it takes nearly twice as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts as a kilo of soya beans, nearly four times as much to produce a kilo of beef as a kilo of chicken, and nearly five times as much to produce a glass of orange juice as a cup of tea. With 2 billion people around the world about to enter the middle class, the agricultural demands on water would increase even if the population stood still.
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D. Most of the Earth’s surface is sea, and the water below it over 97% of the total on Earth is salty. In principle the salt can be removed to increase the supply of fresh water, but at present desalination is expensive and uses lots of energy. Although costs have come down, no one expects it to provide wide-scale irrigation soon.
E. Of the 2.5% of water that is not salty, about 70% is frozen, either at the poles, in glaciers or in permafrost. All living things, except those in the sea, have about 0.75% of the total to survive on. Most of this available water is underground, in aquifers or similar formations. The rest is falling as rain, sitting in lakes and reservoirs or flowing in rivers where it is, with luck, replaced by rainfall and melting snow and ice. There is also, to take note, water vapour in the atmosphere.
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F. Many of these conceptual difficulties arise from other unusual aspects of water. It is a commodity whose value varies according to locality, purpose and circumstance. Take locality first. Water is not evenly distributed just nine countries account for 60% of all available fresh supplies and among them only Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia and Russia have an abundance. America is relatively well off, but China and India, with over a third of the world’s population between them, have less than 10% of its water.
G. Even within countries the variations may be huge. The average annual rainfall in India’s northeast is 110 times that in its western desert. And many places have plenty of water, or even far too much, at some times of the year, but not nearly enough at others. Most of India’s crucial rain is brought by the summer monsoon, which falls, with luck, in just a few weeks between June and September. Flooding is routine, and may become more frequent and damaging with climate change.
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H. The water underground, once largely ignored, has come to be seen as especially valuable as the demands of farmers have outgrown their supplies of rain and surface water. Groundwater has come to the rescue as a miraculous solution: drill a borehole, pump the stuff up from below and in due course it will be replaced. In some places it is replenished if rain or surface water is available. In many places, however, the quantities being withdrawn exceed the annual recharge. This is serious for millions of people in many cities, who often depend on them for their drinking water.
I. All humans, however, need a basic minimum of two litres of water in food or drink each day, and for this there is no substitute. No one survived in the ruins after a heavy earthquake unless they had access to some water-based food or drink. Many people believe water to be a human right, a necessity more basic than bread or a roof over the head. There is a widespread belief that no one should have to pay for water. Water often has a sacred or mystical quality. Throughout history, man’s dependence on water has made him live near it.
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J. Water has provided not just life and food but also a means of transport, a way of keeping clean, a mechanism for removing sewage, a home for fish and other animals, a medium with which to cook, in which to swim, on which to skate and sail, a thing of beauty to provide inspiration, to gaze upon and to enjoy. No wonder a commodity with so many qualities, uses and associations has proved so difficult to organise.
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has ten paragraphs, A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-J.
1. The aquifers are overdrawn in some areas.
2. Water is essential for our daily life.
3. More delicious and processed food contribute to the increasing consumption of water.
4. Negative effects on the water consumption owe much to the demographic changes.
5. The precipitation is unevenly distributed in one nation state or area.
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Questions 6-12
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 6-12 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
6. The supply of water is finite and the situation is getting worse.
7. Most farmers were vexed by the problems caused by the deficiency of water nearly half century ago.
8. The water consumption in farming may climb up while matching against static population.
9. Desalination has experienced a series of great breakthroughs in technology.
10. Most global freshwater resources are in liquid state.
11. Brazil has more available water than Russia.
12. More important than our daily food and domestic dwellings, water is seen as a human right and a totally free source for everyone.
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Question 13
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
13. The writer’s aim in this passage is
A. to warn that most Western governments have underestimated their chronic shortage of water.
B. to prove that water is a commodity that is too difficult to manage.
C. to make believe that water is another kind of the new oil.
D. to show that water is finite, vital but little understood and looks unmanageable.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. H
2. J
3. C
4. B
5. G
6. YES
7. NO
8. YES
9. NOT GIVEN
10. NO
11. NOT GIVEN
12. YES
13. D
IELTS Academic Reading Test