I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month talking about climate change. Whether it’s on my book tour, in media interviews, or just during conversations with colleagues, it’s been great to have so many thoughtful conversations with people about how we prevent the worst effects of climate change.过去一个月，我花了很多时间谈论气候变化。无论是在我的新书宣传活动中，还是在接受媒体采访或是和同事的交谈里，我都很高兴能同人们展开许多细心周到的谈话，探讨如何避免气候变化的最坏影响。
Most of the questions I’ve gotten are about how we get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation is the biggest climate problem we need to solve, and it’s been great to see it get so much attention. But I’ve noticed there’s one key topic that people don’t ask about as much: how we can help the world adapt to climate change.我被问到的大多数问题，都与我们如何实现零温室气体排放有关。缓解气候变化是我们需要解决的最大气候问题，我很高兴看到它得到了如此多的关注。但我注意到一个人们并没有问太多的重要话题：我们可以如何帮助世界适应气候变化。
I understand why. I dedicated five chapters of the book to mitigation and only one to adaptation. (In retrospect, I wish I had written more about the subject.) But there’s a reason I named my book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” and not “How to Stop Climate Change:” Our climate is already changing.我明白这是为什么。我在书里用五章的篇幅将如何缓解，而只用一章讲适应。（回想起来，我希望我当时能写更多这个主题的内容。）但我将书命名为“如何避免气候灾难”而不是“如何阻止气候变化”是有原因的：我们的气候已经在变化了。
You just need to look at last month’s freeze in Texas and last year’s wildfires in California to see that extreme weather events are becoming more common. The scary thing is that these events aren’t the only (or even the most devastating) way a warming world is making life more difficult for people. The biggest damage is happening too gradually to make headline news, mostly in places near the Equator—and no one is more at risk than the world’s poorest people. 你只需看看上个月得州的严寒和去年加州的野火，就知道极端天气正变得越来越普遍。可怕的是，这些事件并不是气候变暖让人们生活变得更难的唯一方式，甚至也不是最具破坏性的方式。最大的伤害是逐渐发生的，因此不足以成为新闻头条，它们主要发生在赤道附近——世界上最贫穷的人口比任何人都更受威胁。
About two-thirds of those living in poverty work in agriculture, often relying on the food they grow to feed their families. A warmer world will be problematic for relatively well-off farmers in America and Europe, but potentially deadly for low-income farmers in Africa and Asia.约有三分之二的贫困人口从事农业生产，常常依靠自己种植的食物养家糊口。全球变暖将给美国和欧洲相对富裕的农民带来麻烦，但对非洲和亚洲的低收入农民来说则可能要命。
The closer you live to the Equator, the worse the effects of climate change will be. Droughts and floods will become more frequent, wiping out harvests more often. Livestock will eat less and produce less meat and milk. The air and soil start to lose moisture, leaving less water available for plants; in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, tens of millions of acres of farmland will become substantially drier.你住得离赤道越近，气候变化的影响就将越严重。干旱和洪水将变得更加频繁，更经常地摧毁收成。牲畜吃得更少，生产的肉和奶也更少。空气和土壤开始失去水分，植物可利用的水分也变得更少。在南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲，数千万亩的农田大体上将变得更加干旱。
When you’re already living on the edge, any one of these changes could be disastrous. We’re likely going to see a situation for these farmers where, instead of your crop getting wiped out every ten years, it gets wiped out every four years. If you don’t have money saved up to buy imported food—which is the case for most smallholder farmers—your children will likely become malnourished and more susceptible to disease.当你已经生活在边缘时，这些变化中的任何一个都可能是灾难性的。我们很可能会看到这些农民出现这样一种情况，他们的农作物不再是每十年被摧毁一次，而是每四年就遭此打击。如果你没有积蓄来购买进口食品（大多数小农户都是这种情况），你的孩子可能会营养不良且更容易患病。
The worst impact of climate change in poor countries will be to make health worse—which is yet another reason why we need to help the poorest improve their health. This starts with raising the odds that malnourished children will survive by improving primary healthcare systems, doubling down on malaria prevention, and continuing to provide vaccines for conditions like diarrhea and pneumonia. We also need to ensure that fewer children are malnourished in the first place by helping poor farmers grow more food.在贫穷国家，气候变化的最坏影响将是使健康状况恶化，这也是我们需要帮助最贫困国家提高其健康水平的又一个原因。首先，要提高营养不良儿童的生存几率，可以通过改善基本医疗保健系统、加强疟疾预防，以及继续利用疫苗预防腹泻和肺炎等疾病。我们还需要通过帮助贫困农民种植出更多食物，从一开始就确保更少儿童出现营养不良的问题。
We need better methods and tools to grow food, just like we need to find zero-carbon ways to move around and generate electricity.
我们需要更好的方法和工具来种植食物，就像我们需要找到零碳出行和发电的方式一样。
This is a problem we can help solve with innovation. We need better methods and tools to grow food, just like we need to find zero-carbon ways to move around and generate electricity. No other organization is in a better position to create the innovations that will help poor farmers adapt to climate change in the years ahead than CGIAR, a global partnership that helps make plants and animals more resilient and productive. (I’ve written about how amazing CGIAR is before.)这是一个我们可以利用创新来解决的问题。我们需要更好的方法和工具来种植食物，就像我们需要找到零碳出行和发电的方式一样。国际农业研究磋商组织（CGIAR）比其他任何组织都具有更加优势的位置来产生创新，从而帮助贫困农民在未来几年中适应气候变化。CGIAR是一个全球伙伴关系，旨在使动植物变得更具适应力和生产力。（我以前写过CGIAR有多么的令人惊叹。）
Our foundation first got involved with CGIAR more than a decade ago, when we supported their work to develop drought- and flood-tolerant varieties of staple crops like maize. We’re already seeing big improvements in places like Zimbabwe. Farmers in drought-stricken areas there who used drought-tolerant maize were able to harvest up to 500 more pounds per acre than farmers who used conventional varieties—producing enough to feed a family of six for nine months.我们基金会第一次与CGIAR接触是在十多年前，当时我们支持他们开发玉米等主要农作物的耐旱耐涝品种。我们已经在津巴布韦等地看到了巨大的进步。在那里的干旱地区，比起使用传统品种的农民，使用抗旱玉米的农民每亩收成提高了500磅，足以养活一个六口之家长达九个月。
CGIAR and other organizations are also creating tools to help farmers adapt to unpredictable weather, like sensors that tell you when to plant seeds and phone apps that help identify pests. Poor farmers need more advances like these, but to provide them, we need to invest more money in agricultural R&D. Doubling CGIAR’s funding so it can reach more farmers is one of the main recommendations by the Global Commission on Adaptation, which I led along with former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and former World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva. (Other recommendations include shoring up water infrastructure and building a stronger safety net to help farmers recover faster.)CGIAR和其他组织还在创造工具来帮助农民适应不可预测的天气，例如可以告诉你该何时播种的传感器，以及可以帮助识别害虫的手机应用程序。贫困农民需要更多类似的进步，但要提供这些进步，我们需要在农业研发上投入更多的资金。将CGIAR的资金增加一倍，使之能够覆盖更多的农民，这是全球气候适应委员会的主要建议之一——我与前联合国秘书长潘基文和前世界银行首席执行官克里斯塔利娜• 格奥尔基耶娃共同领导了这一委员会。（其他建议包括加强水利基础设施建设，以及通过建立更强大的安全网来帮助农民更快地恢复。）
If we don’t take steps now to help farmers adapt, we’re setting ourselves up for a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster. The U.S. military predicts that climate change will become a huge driver of global instability. When people can’t grow enough food to feed themselves, they often leave those areas for places that can better support their families. We’re going to see more “climate refugees” move to cooler regions as the world gets warmer. The Department of Defense is already thinking about where a warmer climate could cause conflicts that they would be asked to intervene in.如果我们现在不采取措施帮助农民适应气候变化，那么我们将为一场人道主义和地缘政治灾难埋下伏笔。美国军方预测，气候变化将成为全球动荡的巨大驱动力。当人们无法种植足够的食物来养活自己时，他们常常会离开这些地区，迁徙到能更好养活家人的地方。随着全球变暖，我们将看到更多的“气候难民”迁徙到更凉爽的地区。美国国防部已经在考虑哪些地方可能因气候变暖而导致冲突，而他们可能会被要求介入。
It’s deeply unfair that the people who contribute the least to climate change will suffer the worst from its effects. Extreme poverty has plummeted in the past quarter century, from 36 percent of the world’s population in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 (although COVID-19 is a huge setback that is undoing a great deal of progress). Climate change could erase even more of these gains, increasing the number of people living in extreme poverty by 13 percent.对气候变化责任最小的人却要遭受气候变化带来的最恶劣影响，这实在太不公平。在过去25年里，极端贫困大幅下降，从1990年的36%降至2015年的10%（虽然新冠肺炎疫情是一个正让大量进步付之东流的巨大挫折）。气候变化可能抹杀更多这样的成果，使极端贫困人口数增长13%。
Rich and middle-income countries are causing the vast majority of climate change, and we need to be the ones to step up and invest more in adaptation. The world’s poorest deserve our help, and they need more of it than they’re getting.富裕和中等收入国家是造成气候变化的主要责任者，因此我们需要站出来并为适应气候变化进行更多投资。世界最贫困的人口理应得到我们的帮助，并且他们需要的要比已经得到的更多。