Daily Current Affairs Quiz: November 1,2021

ANSWER: C

WHY IN NEWS?

• Road Transport and Highways Minister, Nitin Gadkari has launched a knowledge App and platform CONSULT. Emphasizing innovation, entrepreneurship, science technology, research and skill for knowledge transformation.
• The app is the first such global facility by which people who need information, advice, counsel, guidance can contact and call up experts in multiple sectors.
• The app will be a forum for mentors to share their life experiences. The app will allow people to learn from the wisdom which has been acquired over the lifetime.
• Each expert also gets a unique, exclusive page reflecting their contributions by way of articles and video blogs and this serves as their intellectual legacy and helps to promote interest in them.
• CONSULT uses the framework of context and convergence to instantly connect knowledge seekers and knowledge givers.

ANSWER: B

WHY IN NEWS?

• The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of South Korea held that the ‘Shinincheon Bitdream Fuel Cell Power Plant’ at the Shinincheon Bitdream headquarters of Korea Southern Power in Seo-gu, Incheon has been completed and inaugurated.
• The power plant is operated by South Korea’s independent power production company, POSCO Energy and Doosan Fuel Cell. It has a capacity of 78 MW constructed in four stages from 2017. The project cost about 340 billion won ($292 million).

ANSWER: A

WHY IN NEWS?

• Uttarakhand gets India’s largest aromatic garden in the Nainital district. The research wing of the Uttarakhand forest department inaugurated the biggest aromatic garden of India in Lalkuan of Nainital district.
• Established in an area of over 3 acres, the garden has 140 different species of aromatic species from across India. The project was initiated in the year 2018-19 after approval of the Research Advisory Committee in June 2018.

ANSWER: A

WHY IN NEWS?

• 4 Indian institutes have made it to the Times Higher Education (THE)’s World Reputation Rankings 2021, the annual ranking of THE that features the top 200 universities based on the votes from leading academics across the globe.
• Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru ranked among the top 100 (91-100) has topped the Indian Institutes. The other 3 Indian institutes are the IIT Bombay, the IIT Delhi, and the IIT Madras.
• Harvard University of the United States of America (USA) has topped the 2021 ranking. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and University of Oxford from the United Kingdom (UK) has secured the 2nd and 3rd rank respectively.

ANSWER: B

WHY IN NEWS?

The first ever scientific assessment of the amounts of greenhouse gases emitted from and absorbed by forests (2001-2020) in UNESCO World Heritage sites has found that forests in World Heritage sites play a vital role in mitigating climate change.

Mitigating Climate Change:

• World Heritage sites play a vital role in mitigating climate change by absorbing 190 million tons of CO₂from the atmosphere each year.
• Carbon sequestration by world heritage forests over long periods has led to total carbon storage of approximately 13 billion tons of carbon.
  • If all this stored carbon were to be released into the atmosphere as CO₂, it would be akin to emitting 1.3 times the world’s total annual CO₂emissions from fossil fuels.
• However, ten forests released more carbon than they sequestered due to pressure from human activity and climate change, which is alarming.
• UNESCO under its World Heritage Marine Programme lists 50 sites across the globe for their unique marine values. These represent just one per cent of the global ocean area. But they comprise at least 15% of global blue carbon assets.
  • Blue Carbonis organic carbon that is mainly obtained from decaying plant leaves, wood, roots and animals. It is captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems.
• India’s Sundarbans National Park (60 million tonnes of carbon) is among five sites that have the highest blue carbon stocks globally.

Reason for High Emissions:

• At some sites the clearance of land for agriculture caused emissions to be greater than sequestration.
• The increasing scale and severity of wildfires, often linked to severe periods of drought, is also a predominant factor in several cases.
  • Other extreme weather phenomena, such as hurricanes, contributed at certain sites.

Recommendations:

• Protection of Heritage Sites:
  • Strong and sustained protection of UNESCO World Heritage sites and their surrounding landscapes to ensure their forests could continue to act as strong carbon sinks and stores for future generations.
• Rapid Response:
  • Rapidly responding to climate-related events, as well as maintaining and strengthening ecological connectivity through improved landscape management.
• Integrated Protection:
  • Integrating the continued protection of UNESCO World Heritage sites into international, national and local climate, biodiversity and sustainable development strategies.
  • It should be in line with the Paris climate agreement, the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals.

ANSWER: A

WHY IN NEWS?

Recently, the 100-km long body of ice in Antarctica, which has been experiencing rapid melting, was formally named Glasgow after the Glasgow climate summit.

• The 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is being held in Glasgow, UK.
• Research: Scientists from the University of Leeds in England have studied a chain of glaciers in the Getz basin of Antarctica.
  • 14 glaciers in the Getz Basin of West Antarctica are thinning by an average of 25% between 1994 and 2018 due to climate change. The 315 gigatonnes of ice were lost from the region in the last 25 years and contributing to rising global sea levels.
  • The Getz basin is part of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf. The shelf is subject to more changeable oceanic forcing – a process where relatively warm deep ocean water melts the glaciers from below – than other Antarctic shelves.
• Other Glaciers Named: The eight newly named glaciers are based on:
  • Stockholm Conference (1972): One of the major results of the Stockholm conference was the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
  • World Climate Conference, Geneva (1979): The World Climate Conference, now usually referred to as the First World Climate Conference was held in Geneva.
  • Rio Summit (1992): It recommended a list of development practices called Agenda 21. It gave the concept of sustainable development to be combined economic growth with ecological responsibility.
  • COP1 (Berlin, Germany, 1995): The first Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-1) met in Berlin in 1995.
  • Kyoto Protocol (1997): In Kyoto, developed countries agreed to a collective target of a 5.2% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012.
  • COP13 (Bali, Indonesia, 2007): Parties agreed on the Bali Road Map and Bali action plan, which charted the way towards a post-2012 outcome.
  • COP21 (Paris, 2015): To keep global temperature well below 2.0C above pre-industrial times and endeavor to limit them even more to 1.5C.
    • It requires rich nations to maintain USD 100bn a year funding pledge beyond the year 2020.
  • Incheon: The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is based in Incheon, South Korea.

Significance: Over the past 40 years, satellites have observed huge iceberg calving events, changes in the flow of glaciers and rapidly thinning ice demonstrating the devastating impact of global warming.

• The naming of the glaciers after the locations of major climate treaties, conferences and reports is a great way to celebrate the international collaboration on climate change science and policy over the last 42 years.