用水缺乏中東國家面臨危機

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.

在開羅豪華的吉齊拉健身俱樂部裏，工作人員打開淋浴的水龍頭，然後坐在近處喝茶聊天，水就這樣大量地流走了。而同時在開羅其它地區和市郊，水管已經乾枯。

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.

住在開羅貧困社區佐卡·克埃爾布拉克的一名居民拉扎克抱怨說，大部分時間，政府水管已經不能再供應用水到他們居住的地區了。他說，家庭主婦必須走到當地賣水商人的店鋪，從那裏購買珍貴的用水。拉扎克說，他的地區完全得不到供水。每次輪到僅有的五分鐘供水時間裏，孩子們衝到水龍頭喝水。他還說，婦女們要到賣水的商店，每次化兩角五分美金買水。他們買回家的水只能作爲烹飪和飲水之用。

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.

埃及政府的數據資料顯示，埃及每年消耗用水達5百50億立方米，其中百分之87來自尼羅河。埃及和尼羅河下游鄰國之間的衝突，可能造成關係緊張而導致缺水危機更爲惡化。

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.

這些鄰國，除了埃塞俄比亞之外，其它如肯尼亞，烏干達和南蘇丹都說，他們應該分得尼羅河更多的用水。而埃及和蘇丹都堅持，根據英國殖民地協議規定，他們享有尼羅河大部分的水源。

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.

在英國埃克塞特大學教政治學的奧瑪爾·阿紹爾說，埃及正爲歷年來對南方鄰邦非惡意的忽視，付出代價。

"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."

他說：“我們現在得到的，是幾十年來對中非洲和南方鄰邦錯誤外交政策的後果。在穆巴拉克時代，對開發計劃，以及合作關係的全盤忽略，以及自我優越和自卑的混合情結反映於對南方鄰邦的外交政策之中，特別是對埃塞俄比亞，盧旺達，南蘇丹和蘇丹。埃及一直認定，這些國家從納賽爾總統時期就是埃及的朋友和盟邦，不論埃及如何對待他們，他們總是不會改變的。”

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."

戰亂中掙扎的也門，在埃及紅海對岸。也門首都薩納的居民告訴美國之音記者說，政府供應的用水經常中斷。他們經常被迫付錢，使用卡車把水從別處運來。

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.

聯合國開發計劃的資料也指出，也門全國21處含水層，平均每年下陷七米，導致一些專家認爲，在五年至十年之內，也門將無水可以取用。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.

也門郵報總編輯哈吉姆·阿爾馬斯馬裏認爲，全也門獲得政府供水的人數，不到全國人口的十分之一。同時，也門的薩納，將可能是全世界第一個無水可用的首都。他認爲於基礎設施的不足以及也門人普遍種植屬於麻醉毒品的卡特樹，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."

他說：“首先，根本沒有真正的基礎設施，可以適當地協助雨水的利用。因此，所有水源都來自地下水。而百分之70的地下水都消耗於卡特樹的栽種。卡特樹是一種毒品。也門人越種越多，好像每天都在種。”

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.

位於北方的黎巴嫩和敘利亞雨量較大，但也是因爲貧乏基礎設施，讓雨水流向大海而無法留住。黎巴嫩諾特丹大學的經濟學教授路易斯·霍貝卡也指出，水價低廉，使人們任意揮霍。

"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."

他說：“由於水費低廉，人們就肆意消耗用水。再加上缺乏計算水量的方法。例如我們在黎巴嫩，就沒有計算用水數量的設備。不論消耗了多少，我們每年只付費一次。坦白說，這種情形很可笑。它鼓勵人們浪費用水。”

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.

霍貝卡強調，中東地區大部分國家之間的政治關係惡劣，也惡化了缺水危機。他指出，黎巴嫩和以色列之間就爲了黎巴嫩南部利塔尼河水的使用，一直存在着歷史性的爭執。

"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."

霍貝卡繼續說：“中東各國之間的政治經濟關係不好，因此，水問題成爲這個區域的衝突原因之一。水本來是夠用的，不過各國在如何合理引水，以避免不必要糾紛的問題上有衝突。黎巴嫩的利塔尼河就是黎巴嫩和以色列之間目前衝突和潛在衝突的一個重要例子。”