时间:2018-12-01 作者:英语课 分类:2011年VOA慢速英语(十二)月


英语课

Agriculture Report - 'Property Ladder' Helps Poor Gain Land Rights


This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.



Less than a third of people in developing countries own or have any official right to the land they live on. Groups like UN-Habitat and its partners are working on a simple way to secure land rights for millions of people. Development experts say gaining land rights is important for reducing poverty and increasing economic growth and food production.



Poor people can then use the land as security to get bank loans. Land records can also show foreign investors 2 that the land and the rights of those on it are legally secure. Foreign demand has increased in recent years for agricultural land in Africa, Asia and South America. UN-Habitat official Clarissa Augustinus in Nairobi, Kenya, explains why land records are so important.



CLARISSA AUGUSTINUS: "When an investor 1 goes to the government and says 'I want a piece of land,' the government looks on their maps which show that that particular piece of land is empty, and they give it to an investor. But when the investor goes there and looks at the land, he sees that it is fully 3 occupied by a tribe 4 or a family or whatever."



Forcing the people off the land can harm the image of the investor.









A sign marking private property in Angola




CLARISSA AUGUSTINUS: "It can cause what the European investors are calling reputation risk."



Ownership documents like deeds and titles are rare, she says, because establishing property lines and recording 5 land is expensive.



CLARISSA AUGUSTINUS: "You could be talking a couple of hundred dollars to create a deed or a title. And most countries cannot afford to give the majority of citizens, at this point in time, ownership rights because of the cost of creating it, and most individuals cannot afford to subsidize it."



UN-Habitat says the answer in some countries is to create a series of steps in gaining land rights -- a so-called property ladder. First, people could receive a simple document or starter title to the land they are on. They would be safe from the threat of being forced off the land by the state or wealthy buyers. Higher steps would provide greater rights. Finally, a majority of a community could decide to allow individual ownership of the land.



Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia are among the countries adopting property ladders. Ms. Augustinus says Ethiopia has already provided twenty million land certificates on the lower end of the property ladder for about one dollar each.



In Southeast Asia, the United States Agency for International Development is working on a project to help Timor-Leste develop property rights. The first step is an official certificate recognizing a landholder's unopposed claim. East Timor separated from Indonesia in nineteen ninety-nine. The Indonesian army had destroyed land records and forced communities from their land to break up resistance.



And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. I'm Bob Doughty 6.

___



Contributing: William Eagle and Jerilyn Watson



1 investor
n.投资者,投资人
  • My nephew is a cautious investor.我侄子是个小心谨慎的投资者。
  • The investor believes that his investment will pay off handsomely soon.这个投资者相信他的投资不久会有相当大的收益。
2 investors
n.投资者,出资者( investor的名词复数 )
  • a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
  • a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会
3 fully
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地
  • The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气,然后全部呼出。
  • They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。
4 tribe
n.部落,种族,一伙人
  • This is a subject tribe.这是个受他人统治的部落。
  • Many of the tribe's customs and rituals are as old as the hills.这部落的许多风俗、仪式都极其古老。
5 recording
n.录音,记录
  • How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间?
  • I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。
6 doughty
adj.勇猛的,坚强的
  • Most of successful men have the characteristics of contumacy and doughty.绝大多数成功人士都有共同的特质:脾气倔强,性格刚强。
  • The doughty old man battled his illness with fierce determination.坚强的老人用巨大毅力与疾病作斗争。
学英语单词
alberger process
alfred town
anterior band of colon
antihuman blood serum
autecic
backward stagger
Bearskin Lake
beta test
bi-focal
carbonaceous residue
carriage guideways
casarola
cavills
citrinuss
clearing heat and dissipating phlegm
closed user group with outgoing access
D variometer
Dendroica
dilutants
dimolecular reaction
drop target
Egenhofen
el-way
electric spark machine tool
emailaverage
entrained particle
epithalamies
epithetic
excessively drained
exhaust steam ventilation
F instruments
falls back on
family martyniaceaes
festiveness
flexible payload
genus scolytuss
grantons
Grey's Plains
haematoxylin
hair shaft cuticula
hamburger rolls
higman
hinge gap
humour
hung gutter
hypersplit
ineugh
Iwaizumi
John Lennon glasses
kageneck
kidneyed
lemildipine
Libby detector
Ligularia latipes
maccabi
manufacturing center
monogynopaedium
music player
national farming economy
newcut
North Atlantic Westbound Freight Association
nyctipelagic plankton
office plankton
orthotrichum callistomum
osy
para-spectrum
phosphomannan
physical possibility
poppy seeds
proacrosomic granule
Pseudostat
radio frequency cable
recoil motion
regioselective reaction
Remembrance Day
rendering audio
roadway pressure arch
saranac l.
Schulta-Charlton reaction
secondary program
secretion of urine
self-grinding action
septum branchiale
shoulder rests
shuffs
slipway repair
Solënoye
spore print
sporoboluss
Stip(Shtip)
stone chip filler
Swift Current
the Great Starvation
Tidex
tobacco budworm
ultraelegant
uncalendered
underthought
watchphone
weesle
weight buret
Zamoi