剑桥雅思17阅读真题电子版Test3 Passage2

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READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26. which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Palm oil

A

Palm oil is an edible oil derived from the fruit of the African oil palm tree, and is currently   the most consumed vegetable oil in the world. It's almost certainly in the soap we wash with in the morning, the sandwich we have for lunch, and the biscuits we snack on during the day. Why is palm oil so attractive for manufacturers? Primarily because its unique properties – such as remaining solid at room temperature – make it an ideal ingredient for long-term preservation, allowing many packaged foods on supermarket shelves to have 'best before' dates of months, even years, into the future.

B

Many farmers have seized the opportunity to maximise the planting of oil palm trees.

Between 1990 and 2012. the global land area devoted to growing oil palm trees grew from 6 to 17 million hectares, now accounting for around ten percent of total cropland in the entire world. From a mere two million tonnes of palm oil being produced annually globally 50 years ago, there are now around 60 million tonnes produced every single year, a figure looking likely to double or even triple by the middle of the century.

C

However, there are multiple reasons why conservationists cite the rapid spread of oil palm plantations as a major concern. There are countless news stories of deforestation, habitat destruction and dwindling species populations, all as a direct result of land clearing to establish oil palm tree monoculture on an industrial scale, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. Endangered species – most famously the Sumatran orangutan, but also rhinos, elephants, tigers, and numerous other fauna – have suffered from the unstoppable spread of oil palm plantations.

D

'Palm oil is surely one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity,' declares Dr Farnon Ellwood of the University of the West of England, Bristol. 'Palm oil is replacing rainforest, and rainforest is where all the species are. That's a problem.'This has led to some radical questions among environmentalists, such as whether consumers should try to boycott palm oil entirely.

Meanwhile Bhavani Shankar, Professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, argues, 'It's easy to say that palm oil is the enemy and we should be against it. It makes for a more dramatic story, and it's very intuitive. But given the complexity of the argument, I think a much more nuanced story is closer to the truth.'

E

One response to the boycott movement has been the argument for the vital role palm oil plays in lifting many millions of people in the developing world out of poverty. Is it  desirable to have palm oil boycotted, replaced, eliminated from the global supply chain, given how many low-income people in developing countries depend on it for their livelihoods? How best to strike a utilitarian balance between these competing factors has become a serious bone of contention.

F

Even the deforestation argument isn't as straightforward as it seems. Oil palm plantations produce at least four and potentially up toten times more oil per hectare than soybean, rapeseed, sunflower or other competing oils. That immensely high yield – which is predominantly what makes it so profitable – is potentially also an ecological benefit. If ten  times more palm oil can be produced from a patch of land than any competing oil, then ten times more land would need to be cleared in order to produce the same volume of oil from  that competitor.

As for the question of carbon emissions, the issue really depends on what oil palm trees are replacing. Crops vary in the degree to which they sequester carbon – in other words, the amount of carbon they capture from the atmosphere and store within the plant. The more carbon a plant sequesters, the more it reduces the effect of climate change. As Shankar explains: '[Palm oil production] actually sequesters more carbon in some ways than other alternatives. […] Of course, if you're cutting down virgin forest it's terrible – that's what's happening in Indonesia and Malaysia, it's been allowed to get out of hand. But if it's replacing rice, for example, it might actually sequester more carbon.'

G

The industry is now regulated by a group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), consisting of palm growers, retailers, product manufacturers, and other interested parties. Over the past decade or so, an agreement has gradually been reached regarding standards that producers of palm oil have to meet in order for their product to be regarded as officially 'sustainable'. The RSPO insists upon no virgin forest clearing, transparency and regular assessment of carbon stocks, among other criteria. Only once these requirements are fully satisfied is the oil allowed to be sold as certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO). Recent figures show that the RSPO now certifies around 12 million tonnes of palm oil annually, equivalent to roughly 21 percent of the world's total palm oil production.

H

There is even hope that oil palm plantations might not need to be such sterile monocultures, or 'green deserts', as Ellwood describes them. New research at Ellwood's lab hints at one plant which might make all the difference. The bird's nest fern (Asplenium nidus) grows on trees in an epiphytic fashion (meaning it's dependent on the tree only for support, not for  nutrients), and is native to many tropical regions, where as a keystone species it performs a vital ecological role. Ellwood believes that reintroducing the bird's nest fern into oil palm plantations could potentially allow these areas to recover their biodiversity, providing a home for all manner of species, from fungi and bacteria, to invertebrates such as insects, amphibians, reptiles and even mammals.

参考译文

棕榈油

A

棕榈油是一种从非洲油棕树的果实中提取的食用油，是目前世界上消费量最大的植物油。几乎可以肯定，我们早上用的肥皂、午餐吃的三明治和白天吃的饼干里都有棕榈油。为什么棕榈油对制造商如此有吸引力?主要是因为其独特的特性例如在室温下保持固态使其成为长期保存的理想成分，使超市货架上的许多包装食品在未来几个月甚至几年内都在“保质期”内。

B

许多农民抓住机会最大限度地种植油棕树。从1990年到2012年，全球用于种植油棕树的土地面积从600万公顷增加到1700万公顷，现在约占全世界耕地总面积的10%。50年前全球每年仅生产200万吨棕榈油，现在每年生产约6000万吨，到本世纪中叶，这一数字可能翻两倍甚至三倍。

C

然而，环保主义者将油棕种植园的迅速扩张列为主要担忧的原因有很多。有无数关于森林砍伐、栖息地破坏和物种数量减少的新闻报道，所有这些都是开荒以工业规模建立油棕树单一种植的直接结果，特别是在马来西亚和印度尼西亚。濒临灭绝的物种最著名的是苏门答腊猩猩，还有犀牛、大象、老虎和许多其他动物都因油棕种植园的不可阻挡的蔓延而受到影响。

D

‘棕榈油无疑是对全球生物多样性的最大威胁之一，’布里斯托尔西英格兰大学的法农埃尔伍德(FarnonEllwood)博士称。‘棕榈油正在取代雨林，而雨林是所有物种的栖息地。那是个问题。'这在环保主义者中引发了一些激进的问题，例如消费者是否应该尝试完全抵制棕榈油。

与此同时，伦敦亚非研究学院教授BhavaniShankar认为，“说棕榈油是敌人很容易，我们应该反对它。它使故事更具戏剧性，而且非常直观。但考虑到争论的复杂性，我认为一个更细致入微的故事更接近真相。

E

对抵制运动的一种回应是，棕榈油在帮助发展中国家数百万人摆脱贫困方面发挥着至关重要的作用。考虑到发展中国家有多少低收入人口以棕榈油为生，抵制、替代、淘汰棕榈油是否可取?如何最好地在这些竞争因素之间取得功利平衡已成为争论的焦点。

F

即使是砍伐森林的争论也并不像看起来那么简单。油棕种植园每公顷生产的油至少比大豆、油菜籽、向日葵或其他同类油多四倍，甚至可能高达十倍。巨大的产量这主要是它如此有利可图的原因也可能带来生态效益。如果一块土地生产的棕榈油是任何其它油的十倍，那么要生产相同数量的非棕榈油，就需要开垦十倍以上的土地。

至于碳排放的问题，这个问题实际上取决于油棕树正在取代什么。农作物吸收碳的程度各不相同换句话说，它们从大气中吸收并储存在植物中的碳量。植物吸收的碳越多，它对气候变化的影响就越小。正如Shankar解释的那样：“[棕榈油生产]实际上在某些方面比其他替代油类吸收了更多的碳。...]当然，如果你要砍伐原始森林，那就太可怕了这就是在印度尼西亚和马来西亚正在发生的事情，它被允许大肆砍伐。但是，如果它取代大米，它实际上可能会吸收更多的碳。

G

目前，棕榈油行业由一个名为可持续棕榈油圆桌会议(RSPO)的组织监管，该组织由棕榈种植者、零售商、产品制造商和其他相关方组成。在过去十年左右的时间里，人们逐渐就棕榈油生产商必须达到的标准达成一致，以使其产品被官方视为“可持续”。RSPO坚持不砍伐原始森林、透明度和定期评估碳储量等标准。只有在完全满足这些要求后，才允许将棕榈油作为经认证的可持续棕榈油(CSPO)出售。最近的数据显示，RSPO现在每年认证大约1200万吨棕榈油，大约相当于世界棕榈油总产量的21%。

H

人们甚至希望油棕种植园可能不需要像Ellwood所描述的那样是贫瘠的单一种植地或“绿色沙漠”。Ellwood实验室的一项新研究表明了一种植物可能会产生重大影响。鸟巢蕨(Aspleniumnidus)以附生方式生长在树上(这意味着它仅依赖于树来提供支持，而不是获取营养),原产于许多热带地区，在那里作为关键物种发挥着重要的生态作用。Ellwood认为重新引入这种鸟巢蕨到油棕种植园有可能使这些地区恢复其生物多样性，为各种物种提供一个家园，从真菌和细菌到无脊椎动物，如昆虫、两栖动物、爬行动物甚至哺乳动物。