Environment & Ecology GK Questions with Answers – Page 19

Under the notification of 2006, a Category A project is appraised by the Expert Appraisal Committee constituted at the centre, and the ministry grants or refuses the prior environmental clearance on that committee's recommendation.

The EIA Notification of 2006 replaced the earlier notification of 1994 and reorganised the whole clearance process, chiefly by dividing projects into Category A, appraised and cleared at the central level, and Category B, appraised and cleared at the state level, and by laying down the four stages of screening…

Section 3 of that Act gives the central government power to take all measures it thinks necessary to protect and improve the quality of the environment, and the EIA Notifications of 1994 and 2006 were both issued under it.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which came into force in 1970, required every agency of the American federal government to prepare a statement of the environmental effects of any major action it proposed, and that requirement is taken as the beginning of environmental impact assessment as a legal…

At the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties, held at Glasgow in 2021, the Prime Minister announced five pledges that came to be called Panchamrit, the last of which was net zero emissions by 2070, together with targets on non-fossil energy capacity, the share of renewable energy, the cut in projected…

The updated first Nationally Determined Contribution submitted in August 2022 raised the promise on emissions intensity, the greenhouse gas emitted per unit of gross domestic product, to a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 against the 2005 level.

That body is the implementing arm of the Namami Gange programme for cleaning the river Ganga, created under the river conservation effort and not under the climate plan; its concern is pollution in one river basin rather than greenhouse gases.

The Green India Mission is written around two halves of 5 million hectares each: new forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares of land that does not carry forest, and an improvement in the quality of the forest already standing on another 5 million hectares, so the mission's total…

That ministry is the nodal ministry for climate change in the Government of India, coordinates the plan and its reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and itself runs the National Mission for a Green India.

One of the five goals of the National Water Mission is a 20 per cent improvement in water use efficiency, alongside comprehensive water data, attention to areas most vulnerable to shortage, more recycling and better basin-level planning; the mission is handled by the Ministry of Jal Shakti.

PAT is the best known of that mission's four initiatives: large energy-using factories in notified sectors are set a target to reduce their specific energy consumption, and a unit that saves more than its target earns tradable energy saving certificates, which a unit that falls short must buy.

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was launched in January 2010 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, with an initial target of 20,000 MW of grid-connected solar power by 2022; the target was raised to 100 GW in 2015.

The plan of 2008 works through eight National Missions: Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture, and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change.

The National Action Plan on Climate Change was released on 30 June 2008 by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, and it set out the eight National Missions through which India would act on climate change at home.

Goal 17 is the means-of-implementation goal: it covers finance, technology transfer, capacity building, trade, policy coherence, multi-stakeholder partnerships and the data and monitoring needed to track the other sixteen goals, and it is the reason the agenda is described as a global partnership rather than a list of national duties.

It was the first global conference to treat the environment as a subject of international policy, and the United Nations Environment Programme was created later that year as a direct result, with its headquarters at Nairobi in Kenya; the opening day of the conference, 5 June, is observed every year…

Goal 6 seeks to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, which includes safe and affordable drinking water, an end to open defecation, better water quality and the protection of water-related ecosystems; in India the Swachh Bharat Mission and the Jal Jeevan Mission are the…

The Millennium Development Goals were agreed after the United Nations Millennium Summit of 2000 and ran until 2015, covering extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, HIV and other diseases, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

It has been given the task of coordinating and overseeing the goals in India, mapping each goal and target to central ministries and to centrally sponsored schemes, and it publishes the SDG India Index, which scores states and Union Territories on their performance.

Formally the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, it adopted Agenda 21, a non-binding action plan for the twenty-first century covering every level from the global to the local, along with the Rio Declaration, a statement of forest principles, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on…