美国国家公共电台 NPR Why World Hunger Isn't Going Away As Fast As We'd Hoped

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We're going to hear now about the global effort to reduce hunger. In 1990, about a fourth of people on the planet were not getting enough to eat. Today it's less than half that. And a couple years ago, this progress inspired world leaders to gather at the U.N. and make a vow¹. By 2030, they would completely eliminate global hunger. Now there's mounting evidence that goal is under threat, as NPR's Nurith Aizenman reports.

NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE²: Rob Vos has been tracking global hunger for years, first for the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization, now with the International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPRI, in Washington, D.C. And he says just a few years ago the mood among his fellow hunger experts was almost giddy.

ROB VOS: We can do this. We can end hunger within our generation.

AIZENMAN: And he notes that on the surface the latest data released just this month still looks good. Every year IFPRI puts out a Global Hunger Index that rates countries on both general undernourishment and child malnutrition³. And worldwide the numbers have continued to improve at the same steady clip as always. But look deeper at the nation-by-nation stats, and some worrying signs emerge, like...

VOS: There's still quite a few countries' debts - are in serious risk of hunger or alarming stage of hunger situation.

AIZENMAN: Roughly half of all countries analyzed⁴. In some, violent conflict is driving the food crisis. In others, it's weather disasters. Among the worst off, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria, where early this year the U.N. declared that a total of 20 million people were at risk of famine. Last month brought another troubling milestone⁵. The U.N. announced that the absolute number of people without enough food, which had been going down for years, actually went up to 815 million.

VOS: If we don't do a lot more then this goal of ending hunger will not be matched. Not even close.

AIZENMAN: Vos is hoping this accumulation of evidence will prompt action, like more investments to help small farms. Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.

1 vow   

n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓

参考例句：

• My parents are under a vow to go to church every Sunday.我父母许愿，每星期日都去做礼拜。
• I am under a vow to drink no wine.我已立誓戒酒。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 malnutrition   

n.营养不良

参考例句：

• In Africa, there are a lot of children suffering from severe malnutrition.在非洲有大批严重营养不良的孩子。
• It is a classic case of malnutrition. 这是营养不良的典型病例。

4 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 milestone   

n.里程碑；划时代的事件

参考例句：

• The film proved to be a milestone in the history of cinema.事实证明这部影片是电影史上的一个里程碑。
• I think this is a very important milestone in the relations between our two countries.我认为这是我们两国关系中一个十分重要的里程碑。