2 . Biodiversity is a concept that's commonly referenced, yet regularly misunderstood. The complex_______ not only refers to the unbelievable variety of life on Earth, but to how everything from genes to entire ecosystems interact to make the planet habitable. The bad news: science shows that biodiversity is _______ worldwide at a faster rate than at any time in human history. That’s obviously devastating for everything in nature--including us.

“If biodiversity disappears, so do people,” says Dr. Stephen Woodley, field ecologist and bio-diversity expert with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “We are part of the _______ and we do not exist without it.”

Preventing such a catastrophe, says Woodley, begins with understanding why biodiversity is declining, and then taking action to _______ course.

“The two greatest _______ of biodiversity loss are habitat loss, primarily on land, and overexploitation, primarily in the ocean,” Woodley says. He explains that we can solve these problems by permanently _______ more lands and oceans and managing them for their conservation values.

That's the mission of the global Campaign for Nature, a partnership of the Wyss Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Instead of simply protecting 30 percent of the Earth, the_______ also encourages nations, in full partnership with local communities, to focus on the right 30 percent. Those areas, says Woodley, _______ the most important biodiversity, such as endangered species and ecosystems and rare species and ecosystems.

The campaign also recognizes the importance of_______ local rights. Local peoples manage or hold tenure(保有权) over lands that support about 80 percent of the world's biodiversity, making it ________ for these communities to be full partners in developing and implementing strategies.

________, protecting the health of key biodiversity areas is vital for tackling climate change, says National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Enric Sala. Pairing the international Paris Agreement to combat climate change, Sala's paper asserts, “would ________catastrophic(灾难性的) climate change, conserve species, and secure essential ecosystem services.”

“Biodiversity is stability,” says Sala. “Trees, wetlands, grasslands, peat bogs(泥炭沼泽), salt marshes(盐沼), healthy ocean ecosystems, mangroves(红树林), and plants ________ much of the carbon pollution humans put into the atmosphere. Yet, right now, less than half of the planet is in its natural state, which isn't enough.” Bottom line: Nature needs us to act-now. “Moving to Mars is not a(n) ________,” Sala adds. “The only conditions for our life and for the prosperity of human society are here on Earth ...we are ________ protecting it.”

4 . As Frans de Waal, a primatologist (灵长动物学家), recognizes, a better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether animals can do the same things humans can, but how those animals solve the cognitive (认知的) problems they face, like how to imitate the sea floor. Children and some animals are so interesting not because they are smart like us, but because they are smart in ways we haven’t even considered.

Sometimes studying children’s ways of knowing can cast light on adult-human cognition. Children’s pretend play may help us understand our adult taste for fiction. De Waal’s research provides another interesting example. We human beings tend to think that our social relationships are rooted in our perceptions, beliefs, and desires, and our understanding of the perceptions, beliefs, and desires of others — what psychologists call our “theory of mind.” In the 80s and 90s, developmental psychologists showed that pre-schoolers and even infants understand minds apart from their own. But it was hard to show that other animals did the same. “Theory of mind” became a candidate for the special, uniquely human trick.

Yet de Waal’s studies show that chimps (黑猩猩) possess a remarkably developed political intelligence — they are much interested in figuring out social relationships. It turns out, as de Waal describes, that chimps do infer something about what other chimps see. But experimental studies also suggest that this happens only in a competitive political context. The evolutionary anthropologist (人类学家) Brain Hare and his colleagues gave a junior chimp a choice between pieces of food that a dominant chimp had seen hidden and other pieces it had not seen hidden. The junior chimp, who watched all the hiding, stayed away from the food the dominant chimp had seen, but took the food it hadn’t seen.

Anyone who has gone to an academic conference will recognize that we may be in the same situation. We may say that we sign up because we’re eager to find out what other human beings think, but we’re just as interested in who’s on top. Many of the political judgments we make there don’t have much to do with our theory of mind. We may show our respect to a famous professor even if we have no respect for his ideas.

Until recently, however, there wasn’t much research into how humans develop and employ this kind of political knowledge. It may be that we understand the social world in terms of dominance, like chimps, but we’re just not usually as politically motivated as they are. Instead of asking whether we have a better everyday theory of mind, we might wonder whether they have a better everyday theory of politics.

What Lies Beneath

“Earth” has always been an odd choice of name for the third planet from the Sun. After all, an alien (外星人) examining it through a telescope would note that two-thirds of its surface is     1     not of land but of oceans of water. Marine biologists think the oceans might host more than 2,000,000 species of marine animals, of which they have so far     2     perhaps a tenth.

A new     3     hopes to change this. Smoothly launched in London on April 27th, Ocean Census (海洋普查) aims to discover 100,000 new species of marine animal over the coming decade.

The attempt is happening now for two reasons. One is that, the longer scientists     4    , the fewer there will be to document. Climate change is heating the oceans, as well as making them more acidic as carbon dioxide is absorbed into the water.

The second one is technological. Marine biologists discover about 2,000 new species a year, a rate hardly changed since Darwin’s day. Ocean Census is     5     it can go faster. “Cyber taxonomy (网络分类学)”, for instance, involves feeding animal DNA information into computers, which can quickly decide whether it meets the     6     for a new species.

Exactly what the new effort might turn up, of course, is impossible to forecast. But history suggests it will be fruitful. Half a century ago scientists detected hot openings on the sea bed that were home to organisms living happily in conditions that, until then, had been thought     7     to life. These days, such openings are one credible     8     for the origin of all life on Earth.

More practical benefits can’t be ignored. Many drugs, for example, come originally from biological     9    . An ocean full of unrecorded life will almost certainly prove a rich seam (矿层) from which to     10     more.

To help make use of its data, Ocean Census plans to make it attainable to scientists and the public without charge, who will be able to search it for anything valuable or unexpected.

8 . El Nino, a Spanish term for “the Christ child”, was named by South American fisherman who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nino sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.

The weather effects both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nino, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nino in 1997 helped American’s economy grow by 15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest, farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural in rich countries in growth than the fall in poor ones.

But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought (干旱）in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.

The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards. This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.

Simple improvements to infrastructure (基础设施）can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers (下水道）make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino’s harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.

The need to feed a growing population is putting much pressure on the world’s supply of water. With 97% of the world’s water too salty to be drunk or used in agriculture, the worldwide supply of water needs careful management, especially in agriculture.     1     the idea of a water shortage seems strange to someone fortunate enough to live in a high rainfall country, many of the world’s agricultural industries       2     (experience) constant water shortages.

Although dams can be built to store water for agricultural use in dry areas and dry seasons, the costs of water redistribution are very high. Not only is there the cost of the engineering itself, but there is also an environmental cost to be considered. One typical example is       3     where valleys are flooded to create dams, houses are lost and wildlife homes destroyed. Besides, water may flow easily through pipes to fields, but it cannot be transported from one side of the world to     4    . Each country       5     therefore rely on the management of its own water to supply its farming requirements.

This is particularly       6     (trouble) for countries with agricultural industries in areas dependent on irrigation. In Texas, farmers’ overuse of irrigation water     7    (result) in a 25% reduction of the water stores. In the Central Valley area of southwestern USA, a huge water engineering project provides water    8     farming in dry valleys, but much of the water use is being poorly managed.

Saudi Arabia’s attempts     9     (grow) wheat in desert areas have seen the pumping of huge quantities of irrigation water from underground reserves. Because there is no rainfall in these areas, such reserves can only decrease, and it is believed that fifty years of pumping       10     (see) them run dry.