QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 31 July 2020

Solution: a)

Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 has been released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The FRA 2020 has examined the status of, and trends in, more than 60 forest-related variables in 236 countries and territories in the period 1990–2020.

Forest area has declined all across the world in the past three decades. The world lost 178 mha of forest since 1990, an area the size of Libya.

The rate of forest loss has also declined due to the growth of sustainable management.

India has ranked third among the top 10 countries that have gained in forest areas in the last decade, the latest Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) has said.

FAO has brought out this comprehensive assessment every five years since 1990. This report assesses the state of forests, their conditions and management for all member countries.

India accounts for two per cent of total global forest area.

The largest proportion of the world’s forests were tropical (45 per cent), followed by boreal, temperate and subtropical.

More than 54 per cent of the world’s forests were in only five countries — the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China.

The highest per cent of plantation forests were in South America while the lowest were in Europe.

Source

Solution: d)

Union Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar recently announced that his Ministry was working on a programme to provide water and fodder to animals at the forest itself to deal with the challenge of human-animal conflict that was causing the death of animals. For this, Lidar-based survey technology will be used for the first time. Lidar is a method of measuring distance by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflection with a sensor.

Digiantra Research and Technology (DRT), a space tech startup is India’s first air and space surveillance company. It has developed India’s first In-orbit Space Debris Monitoring and tracking system harnessing the technology behind LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging).

Solution: d)

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) is a cooperative society under Belgian law owned by its member financial institutions with offices around the world.

SWIFT messaging system is a messaging network that financial institutions use to securely transmit information and instructions through a standardized system of codes. Under SWIFT, each financial organization has a unique code which is used to send and receive payments.

SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer: rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other.

The SWIFT is a secure financial message carrier — in other words, it transports messages from one bank to its intended bank recipient.

SWIFT India is a joint venture of top Indian public and private sector banks and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication). The company was created to deliver high quality domestic financial messaging services to the Indian financial community.

Solution: a)

An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog, mist, dust, forest exudates and geyser steam. Examples of anthropogenic aerosols are particulate air pollutants and smoke.

Aerosols influence climate in two primary ways: by changing the amount of heat that gets in or out of the atmosphere, or by affecting the way clouds form.

Some aerosols, like many kinds of dust from ground-up rocks, are light-colored and even a little bit reflective. When the sun’s rays beam down on them, they bounce the rays back out of the atmosphere, preventing that heat from ever reaching Earth’s surface. The effect can be dramatic: The Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991, in the Philippines, spewed the equivalent of 1.2 square miles of tiny, reflective rock particles into the high stratosphere—cooling the planet for two full years afterward.

Source  Source

Solution: d)

Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple Government Ministries and Departments. It weaves together a large number of ideas and thoughts into a single, comprehensive vision so that each of them can be implemented as part of a larger goal.

Each individual element stands on its own, but is also part of the larger picture. Digital India is to be implemented by the entire Government with overall coordination being done by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

Digital India aims to provide the much-needed thrust to the nine pillars of growth areas, namely Broadband Highways, Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, Public Internet Access Programme, e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology, e-Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services, Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing, IT for Jobs and Early Harvest Programmes. Each of these areas is a complex programme in itself and cuts across multiple Ministries and Departments.