申論題

   The legal and illegal pumping of underground water faster than it can be replaced has compressed water-storing aquifers, causing Bangkok to sink between 2cm to 5cm each year. Scientists say the rise of waters in the nearby gulf as a result of global warming could combine with the sinking land to put Bangkok under water much of the time by the middle of this century. 

   Similar subsidence and seawater encroachment are occurring in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila, where a typhoon last month triggered the worst flooding in the Philippine capital for decades. 

   Bangkok, some experts half-jokingly say, may well return to what it was in the 19th century－a water world where almost all its 400,000 inhabitants lived on raft-houses or homes on stilts.