Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Environment) – May 16, 2020

One of the most sought after wildlife holiday destinations in India, Kaziranga National park’s 430 square kilometer area sprinkled with elephant-grassy meadows, swampy lagoons, and dense forests is home to more than 2200 Indian one-horned rhinoceros, approximately 2/3rd of their total world population. Formed in 1908 on the recommendation of Mary Curzon, the park is located in the edge of the Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspots – Golaghat and Nagaon district. In the year 1985, the park was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The Coral Triangle is one of the most important reef systems in the world. It covers 132,636 km across six countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.It occupies just 1.5% of the world’s total ocean area, but represents 30% of the world’s coral reefs.

WWF came into existence on 29 April 1961, when a small group of passionate and committed individuals signed a declaration that came to be known as the Morges Manifesto.

Autotrophs.

Statement 1 is correct: Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own food, using materials from inorganic sources. The word “autotroph” comes from the root words “auto” for “self” and “troph” for “food.” They form the base of an ecosystem’s energy pyramid, and provide the fuel that all the heterotrophs (organisms that must get their food from others) need to exist.

Statement 2 is correct: Plants, Green algaes, and bacteria or archaebacteria are the examples of autotrophs.

Following a series of initiatives and conventions organized in partnership with faith-based organizations, UN Environment launched the Faith for Earth Initiative in November 2017. The goal of Faith for Earth is to strategically engage with faith-based organizations and partner with them to collectively achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and fulfill the objectives of the 2030 Agenda.Faith for Earth has three main goals: to inspire and empower faith organizations and their leaders to advocate for protecting the environment, to green faith-based organizations’ investments and assets to support the implementation of SDGs, and to provide them with knowledge and networks to enable their leaders to effectively communicate with decision-makers and the public.

The Ganga action plan was, launched by Shri Rajeev Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India on 14 Jan. 1986 with the main objective of pollution abatement, to improve the water quality by Interception, Diversion and treatment of domestic sewage and present toxic and industrial chemical wastes from identified grossly polluting units entering in to the river. The other objectives of the Ganga Action Plan are as under.

• Control of non-point pollution from agricultural runoff, human defecation, cattle wallowing and throwing of un-burnt and half burnt bodies into the river.
• Research and Development to conserve the biotic, diversity of the river to augment its productivity.
• New technology of sewage treatment like Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) and sewage treatment through afforestation has been successfully developed.
• Rehabilitation of soft-shelled turtles for pollution abatement of river have been demonstrated and found useful.
• Resource recovery options like production of methane for energy generation and use of aquaculture for revenue generation have been demonstrated.
• To act as trend setter for taking up similar action plans in other grossly polluted stretches in other rivers.

The Minister for Environment, Forests & Climate Change launched ‘The National Air Quality Index’ (AQI) in New Delhi. The Air Quality Index is considered as ‘One Number- One Colour-One Description’ for the common man to judge the air quality within his vicinity.

The total mass of all mobile phones produced worldwide is tens of thousands of tonnes per year, and accessories represent tens of thousands of tonnes more. Also, the fastest-growing markets for new and used mobile phones are in many developing countries. The result of that growth is waste when such phones reach the end of their lives. The issue of wastes from discarded mobile phones is, therefore, a significant one due to their sheer quantity globally and the possibility of pollution as well as the loss of valuable resources.In 2002 the Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative (MPPI) was launched, when the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention established a working group consisting of experts from Parties and Signatories interested in a sustainable partnership on the environmentally sound management of end-of-life mobile telephones as well as representatives of mobile phone manufacturers and the Secretariat of the Basel Convention.

Ripu and Chirang are vital habitats that serve as a corridor linking Manas National Park, Assam with Buxa in West Bengal, and also the forests of Bhutan, especially important for Asian Elephants Elaphas maximus. These forests are already part of the Chirang- Ripu Elephant Reserve of Assam.

BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL).

Statement 1 is correct: The BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) is a multilateral fund, supported by donor governments and managed by the World Bank.

Statement 2 is correct: It promotes reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the land sector, from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+), and from sustainable agriculture, as well as smarter land-use planning, policies and practices.