QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz,30 July 2018

Solution: b.

Once completed, in three years, it will be Africa’s largest hydropower dam, standing some 170m tall. The dam is located in the Benishangul region, a vast, arid land on the border with Sudan, some 900km north-west of the capital Addis Ababa.

BBC; BBC2;

Image Source: Yale;

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Solution: b.

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is a global non-profit organisation which generates interdisciplinary knowledge to inform policy and practice towards conservation and sustainability. Its head office is in Bangalore.

For over two decades, ATREE has worked on social-environmental issues from local to global policy levels. ATREE envisions a society committed to environmental conservation and sustainable and socially just development.

ATREE’s mission is to generate rigorous interdisciplinary knowledge for achieving environmental conservation and sustainable development, to enable the use of this knowledge by policy makers and society, and to train the next generation of environmental leaders.

Source/Improvisation: TH;

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Solution: c.

The Indus dolphin, Platanista gangetica minor,is one of two subspecies of freshwater dolphins found in the Indian subcontinent. The other, the Gangetic dolphin, Platanista gangetica gangetica, is found in the Ganga-Brahmaputra river basin. The Indus River dolphins, that had “gone extinct in India in the 1930s”, had been “discovered” again in the Beas in 2007.

WWF: WWF-India, in partnership with the Department of Forests and Wildlife Preservation, Punjab  conducted the first ever organised Indus River Dolphin Survey in May 2018 across a 185km stretch of the river Beas (Beas Conservation Reserve).

Based on the direct counts, after correcting for dolphins that were missed by the survey, the final estimate of the population of Indus River Dolphins in the Beas River stands at 5 – 11 individuals. Although the population of the species is small, its presence in the Beas river above the Harike barrage for 70 years, indicates no decline in  population of the species. The presence of a young calf is also a positive sign and indicates a population that is large enough to be viable.

IUCN; TH;

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Solution: a.

The most appropriate answer is option ‘a’ and not ‘c’. Consumerism, in the derogatory sense of the term, refers to the preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods.

“The Earth Overshoot Day (determined by the Global Footprint Network) marks the point at which our plant is unable to regenerate any further in a year… we have in recent times indulged in an orgy of consumption in the name of bringing prosperity and well being to all… we have given little thought to the fact that resources of our plant are finite and need to be replenished if we are to sustain our pursuit of a good life.. in order to lead a saner life in a more stable world, the economic thinking that drives much of our reckless consumption needs to make a moral distinction between wants and needs. There is more to life than gross domestic product and the growth that has become the unquestioned god of economic policy..”

TH;

Solution: a.

“Wilderness” areas are regions minimally impacted by human activities such as fishing, pollution and shipping. Most such areas are presently found in international waters, away from human populations. It’s a place where the environment and ecosystem is acting in basically an undisturbed way that’s free from human activity.

Most of the areas the researchers defined as wilderness fell within the Arctic, Antarctic and around Pacific Island nations, or in the open ocean, where human activity is more limited. Despite their conservation status, MPAs appear to host just 4.9% of global marine wilderness.

Although fishing is one of the most significant direct impacts that humans can have on ocean ecosystems, many of the problems being caused originate on land. Runoff of nutrients from farming fertilisers, chemicals from poorly controlled industrial production, and the influx of plastic pollution from rivers are all disrupting ocean life.

BBC; TH;

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