Name: Water crisis - BBC Learning English
Uploaded: 2021-10-28T16:55:14.000Z
Duration: 11 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Climate change and population growth put more pressure on water supplies.

We'll show you how the law can help those in need get what they need.

As populations and temperatures rise, how will the law stop a crisis?

And... can the law stop businesses taking the water you need to live?

There are more than 7.8 billion of us on the planet.

but there's only a limited amount available.

water levels in reservoirs started dropping in 2015.

In 2017, people started talking about Day Zero,

a possible time when taps would need to be turned off.

Real worries that a city of four and a half million people

would need to queue in the streets to get water.

30 years ago, water reached this motorway,

Huge sinkholes have opened up, wrecking roads and homes.

This is the kind of problem that causes other problems.

from the African Ministers Council on Water.

that promote universal access to clean water

and I would consider the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030

However, these international conventions,

protocols and political commitments are loosely structured

in a way that countries are not forced to commit to them.

So, in such a case, with a weak framework as that,

then it becomes a matter of choice upon individual countries

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

encourage sharing water, but they aren't legally binding:

Water issues are usually very local in terms of challenges and opportunities,

and each local set-up has their own unique set of features.

to be able to influence the local legislation?

within the sensitivities of local context,

to serve the agenda of universal access to water.

While we need a global commitment to solve the water crisis,

So, they need local laws that work in their context.

The water crisis will make people leave their homes;

do they have the right to seek help in other countries?

We currently do not have laws or policies

that provides for climate-induced migration

that happens as a result of climate change.

Unfortunately, that is the current situation

Unfortunately, there aren't laws directly protecting people

who have to leave their homes due to lack of water.

People currently don't have the right to seek refuge from climate issues.

Do we have enough climate laws to manage the water crisis?

At the national level and regional level,

as well as global level, these kind of laws are needed.

Within the context of climate change, of course,

feeds into regional level and to the global level.

So, there's no kind of one-way approach to this.

But, to get things done, we really need laws

at a smaller, regional and national level too.

Paul says there aren't many international laws

protecting people forced out of their homes to find water,

Of course, water isn't just vital for drinking.

We use it in our factories in huge amounts.

People depend on work and water to survive,

and Taiwan's biggest reservoir, Tsengwen,

Other reservoirs in Taiwan are also thirsty,

including this one in the north, which supplies water

for Taiwan's $100 billion semiconductor industry.

The world's largest contract chip maker, TSMC, is nearby.

need a lot of water to spray clean the silicon wafers

using up to 170,000 tonnes of water a day.

thousands of hectares of nearby farmland.