[00:02.02]Unit 22 Environmental Protection [00:06.60]Lesson 3 Unnatural Disasters [00:10.92]Hell and High Water [00:13.46]The last few years have been the worst period [00:16.21]on record for environmental disasters [00:19.22]and experts are predicting far worse to come. [00:22.35]Jin Li reports. [00:24.95]A In the last decade, floods, droughts, [00:28.71]windstorms, earthquakes, typhoons, [00:31.69]volcanic eruptions and froese fires [00:34.35]have become increasingly common. [00:36.53]There has been disastrous flooding in Asia, [00:39.73]Africa, America and Oceania. [00:42.78]Even prospers Europe has sufferd and [00:45.43]and large areas from the Britain [00:47.37]to Germany have all been down the water. [00:49.77]Storms have been getting worse everywhere too, [00:52.73]with a growing number of hurricanes [00:54.39]hitting the US, [00:55.93]the Caribbean and Central America. [00:58.28]Drought has affected large areas of Africa [01:01.00]for years and many other zones [01:03.10]are becoming drier. [01:04.54]For example, the Yellow River once notorious [01:07.50]for flooding the Chinese landscape, [01:09.73]failed to reach the sea at all [01:11.73]on 226 days, in 1997. [01:15.24]A number of nations have already been [01:17.81]in armed conflict over water, [01:20.74]and drought in the West of the US [01:23.12]has resulted in enormous forest fires. [01:25.27]