Adapting to the effects of climate change: reading answers and analysis
Even if emissions stopped today, warming would continue for decades, so places are adapting. The passage visits five projects: Miami Beach raising its roads and pumping out water, bamboo dams that help Java's mangroves regrow, floating houses in the Mekong Delta, salt-tolerant vegetables in Bangladesh, and heat-reflecting streets and trees in Los Angeles.
Questions 14-26 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
Each paragraph from B to F is one place and one person. The paragraph matching (14-17) uses A, C, D and F. The sentence completions (18-22) take one answer from each of B to F in order. The people matching (23-26) returns to B, C, D and F.
Questions 14-17
The 40-year warming forecast is in A. How mangroves protect coastlines (trapping sediment, calming waves) is in C. Cost-effectiveness is the floating houses in D, at about a third of the cost of new foundations. The data-mapping tool that found streets with little shade is in F.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | C | — |
| 15 | A | — |
| 16 | D | — |
| 17 | F | — |
Questions 18-22
One sentence per case study, in passage order, so once you find the place name the answer is close by. Question 20 needs a verb (what the houses can do), and question 21 needs a plural noun for what the farmers grow.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 18 | pumps | — |
| 19 | dams | — |
| 20 | float | — |
| 21 | crops | — |
| 22 | trees | — |
Questions 23-26
Toi wants approaches that involve local communities. Spotts calls urban cooling a matter of life and death. Pineda expects to go back and adjust in 20-40 years. English says the technology is now needed in places that didn't need it before. Chowdhury isn't used.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 23 | B | — |
| 24 | E | — |
| 25 | A | — |
| 26 | C | — |
The questions most people get wrong
Wetlands International's first step was building semi-permeable dams from bamboo and brushwood. 'Seawalls' is wrong, because those are the approach that kept collapsing.
C (English). Her point that the technology is becoming necessary in places that didn't need it before is 'the number of locations has grown'.
A. The claim that warming would continue for around 40 years even if emissions stopped is the prediction about how long the effects will last.
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The full Cambridge 20 Test 4 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 20, Test 4, Reading Passage 2. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.