来源：《基督科学箴言报》
原文刊登日期：2021年6月28日
本文适合英语二考生
A long list of environmental issues needs serious attention. But none may be more fundamental than preserving land and water to maintain biodiversity and help slow climate change. A recent report shows just how well humanity is doing on one of those goals. In the last decade, some 8.1 million square miles have been added as parks or conservation areas. That’s an area larger than Russia, a country that spans 11 time zones.
一长串的环境问题需要认真关注。但没有什么比保护土地和水更重要的了，以保持生物多样性，帮助减缓气候变化。最近的一份报告显示，人类在其中一个目标上做得很好。在过去十年里，大约810万平方英里的土地成为公园或保护区。这个面积比跨越11个时区的俄罗斯还大。
To give that success a different perspective, of all the land ever protected and conserved by official action, 42% was in the past decade. That pace of problem-solving sets a good example of what can be done with other global challenges.
从另一个角度来看，在所有受到官方保护的土地中，42%是在过去十年中获得的。这种解决问题的速度为解决其他全球性挑战树立了良好的榜样。
As of 2020, some 17% of the world’s landmass is protected from development. That meets a goal set in 2010 at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan. The convention also sought to protect 10% of the world’s oceans by 2020. That mark was missed; nonetheless, 7.74% of coastal and ocean waters are now protected, according to the 2020 Protected Planet Report.
截至2020年，世界上约17%的陆地受到保护，不受开发影响。这符合2010年在日本举行的联合国生物多样性公约上设定的目标。该公约还寻求到2020年保护世界上10%的海洋。这个目标没有达到；尽管如此，根据《2020年受保护星球报告》，7.74%的沿海和海洋水域现在得到了保护。
This October, new goals for protecting additional land and water will be negotiated at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference. Dr. Bruno Oberle, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, is urging the conference to set a goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land, fresh water, and oceans by 2030. “And these areas must be placed optimally to protect the diversity of life on Earth and be effectively managed and equitably governed,” he adds. Britain already has committed to protecting 30% of its land by 2030 with new parks and protection of “areas of outstanding natural beauty.”
今年10月，联合国生物多样性会议将就保护更多土地和水资源的新目标进行谈判。位于瑞士格兰的国际自然保护联盟总干事布鲁诺·奥伯勒博士敦促大会制定一个目标，到2030年保护世界上30%的陆地、淡水和海洋。他补充说：“为了保护地球上生命的多样性，选取的30%必须是最优的，并得到有效的管理和公平的治理。”英国已经承诺到2030年保护30%的国土，新建公园和保护“自然美景突出的地区”。
Land protection comes with its own challenges. The areas must be properly supervised. And local people living near them must not bear all the costs of protecting them when the benefits will be widely shared. Protected regions also will be more effective if they can be connected to other protected regions, allowing wildlife to migrate between them.
土地保护也有其自身的挑战。保护区必须得到适当的监督。当环保带来的好处被广泛分享时，居住在保护区附近的当地人不应该承担保护环境的所有成本。如果保护区能够与其他保护区连接起来，允许野生动物在保护区之间迁徙，那么保护区也将更加有效。
After centuries of rapid human expansion on the planet, humanity may have turned a corner and decided to balance human development and the land that sustains it. A healthy resiliency for both depends on that task. The recent success in land conservation is a model for what can still be done.
人类在地球上经历了几个世纪的快速扩张之后，可能已经拐了个弯，决定平衡人类发展和土地之间的关系。两者的健康恢复能力取决于这项扩大保护区任务。最近在土地保护方面取得的成功为我们提供了一个范例。