雀巢董事长 缺水比气候变化更紧迫

World leaders must make water scarcity a bigger priority than climate change because the problem is far more urgent than global warming, the chairman of one of the biggest food companies has warned.

全球最大食品公司之一的董事长警告称，世界各国领导人必须对缺水问题给予比气候变化更优先的关注，因为缺水问题远比全球变暖更加紧迫。

“Today, you cannot have a political discussion anywhere without talking about climate change,” Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck told the Financial Times. “Nobody talks about the water situation in this sense. And this water problem is much more urgent.

“如今，你在任何地方参与政治讨论，都免不了谈到气候变化，”雀巢(Nestlé)董事长包必达(Peter Brabeck)对英国《金融时报》表示。“没有人这么讨论水资源状况，而水的问题其实紧迫得多。

“I am not saying climate change is not important. What I am saying is even without climate change we are running out of water and this has to become the first priority.”

“我并没有说气候变化不重要。我想说的是，即使没有气候变化，我们也在耗尽水资源，这必须成为头号优先考虑事项。”

Mr Brabeck’s comments come as businesses are having to adapt to rising water costs around the world and rivalries mount over poorly managed supplies of a resource long taken for granted.

包必达发表此言之际，企业正不得不适应世界各地不断上涨的用水成本，同时，围绕这种长期被忽视的资源的供应管理不善，各方的矛盾正在加剧。

In the past three years, companies have committed $84bn to improve the way they conserve, manage or obtain water, according to FT research and data from Global Water Intelligence, a market analysis firm.

根据英国《金融时报》的研究和市场分析公司“全球水资源情报”(Global Water Intelligence)的数据，过去三年里，全球企业已承诺投资840亿美元，改进他们节省、管理或获取水资源的方式。

In the last year, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, two of the world’s biggest miners, agreed to spend $3bn on a desalination plant for a copper mine in Chile, curbing their use of fragile local water supplies.

去年，全球最大的两家矿商必和必拓(BHP Billiton)和力拓(Rio Tinto)同意斥资30亿美元，为智利的一个铜矿建设海水淡化厂，以减少使用脆弱的当地供水。

Nestlé has set aside 38m Swiss francs ($42.5m) on new water-saving and treatment equipment at plants.

雀巢已拨出3800万瑞士法郎（合4250万美元），拟投资于旗下工厂新的节水和水处理设备。

Other companies, from Ford to Google, have invested in measures to stem their use of fresh water, an issue Google’s data centre head, Joe Kava, has warned is “the big elephant in the room” for data companies, which can need thousands of gallons daily to cool centres.

从福特(Ford)到谷歌(Google)，其它公司已投资于各种措施减少各自的淡水使用量。谷歌数据中心负责人乔•卡瓦(Joe Kava)警告，这个问题对于数据公司就像是“房间里的大象”，因为这些公司每天可能需要数千加仑的水来冷却数据中心。

Andrew Metcalf, an investment analyst, said: “Water scarcity is finally starting to bite financially.” It already has “credit-negative implications” for the mining industry, he said in a report last year for Moody’s, the credit rating agency.

投资分析师安德鲁•梅特卡夫(Andrew Metcalf)表示：“缺水终于开始造成财务影响。”他在去年为信用评级机构穆迪(Moody’s)撰写的一份报告中表示，这个问题已经对采矿业产生了“负面信用影响”。