Environment & Ecology Quiz: Environmental Days and Reports

The correct answer is B, 5 June. The United Nations General Assembly designated this date after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in 1972, and the day has been observed since 1974, each year with a fresh theme and a host country, with the United Nations Environment Programme leading it. Option A is wrong because 22 April is Earth Day, which began as a citizens movement in the United States in 1970 and is not a United Nations observance in origin. Option C is wrong because 16 September is World Ozone Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Option D is wrong because 22 March is World Water Day, which came out of Agenda 21 of the Rio Earth Summit. Link 5 June to Stockholm and the confusion with Earth Day disappears.

The correct answer is B, the Montreal Protocol, which was signed on 16 September 1987 and commits countries to phasing out chlorofluorocarbons and other substances that destroy stratospheric ozone; the day is formally called the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. Option A is wrong because the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 deals with greenhouse gases and binding emission cuts, not with ozone, and has no observance day named after it. Option C is wrong because the Ramsar Convention on wetlands was signed on 2 February 1971 and is remembered on World Wetlands Day. Option D is wrong because the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 at the twenty-first Conference of the Parties and again concerns climate change rather than the ozone layer. Keep ozone with Montreal and climate with Kyoto and Paris.

The correct answer is A, 1971. The Convention on Wetlands was signed on 2 February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and it is the oldest of the modern global conservation treaties; the day has been observed on that anniversary since 1997. Option B is wrong because 1992 is the year of the Rio Earth Summit, which produced the Convention on Biological Diversity and the climate convention, not the wetlands treaty. Option C is wrong because 1987 is the year of the Montreal Protocol on ozone and also of the Brundtland report on sustainable development. Option D is wrong because 1962 is the year Silent Spring was published, an important book for the environmental movement but not a treaty. Remember the pairing as Ramsar, 2 February, 1971, wetlands.

The correct answer is C, the Forest Survey of India, which works under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and is based at Dehradun. It has brought out the report once in two years since 1987, assessing forest cover and tree cover state by state from satellite imagery. Option A is wrong because the Central Pollution Control Board is a pollution body: it runs the national air and water monitoring network and issues the Air Quality Index. Option B is wrong because the Wildlife Institute of India, also at Dehradun, is a research and training institute and is the technical partner in the tiger estimation, not the publisher of forest statistics. Option D is wrong because the National Tiger Conservation Authority administers Project Tiger and the tiger reserves, and with the Wildlife Institute it publishes the tiger count, not the forest report.

The correct answer is B, the United Nations Environment Programme. The report compares the emission cuts that countries have actually promised with the cuts the world would need to hold warming to agreed limits, and the difference between the two is the gap of the title; UNEP releases it shortly before the annual climate conference. Option A is wrong because the World Meteorological Organization publishes the State of the Global Climate and the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which report observed conditions rather than policy gaps. Option C is wrong because the World Economic Forum publishes the Global Risks Report, a survey of risks to the world economy. Option D is wrong because the International Energy Agency publishes the World Energy Outlook, which projects energy demand and supply. Remember that UNEP also owns the Adaptation Gap Report and the Global Environment Outlook.

The correct answer is C, the World Wide Fund for Nature, which brings out the Living Planet Report once in two years. Its central measure, the Living Planet Index, is prepared with the Zoological Society of London and shows how populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have changed over time. Option A is wrong because the International Union for Conservation of Nature publishes the Red List of Threatened Species, which classifies species by risk of extinction rather than tracking population trends. Option B is wrong because UNESCO publishes the World Water Development Report and administers the World Heritage list. Option D is wrong because the Food and Agriculture Organization publishes the State of the World's Forests and the Global Forest Resources Assessment. The trap here is IUCN, so tie Living Planet firmly to WWF.

The correct answer is B, Yale and Columbia Universities. The index is academic work, produced by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy together with a centre at Columbia University, and it ranks countries on indicators of environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Option A is wrong because Germanwatch, a German organisation, publishes the Global Climate Risk Index, which ranks countries by the losses they suffer from extreme weather; the two indices are the standing pair of distractors in this question. Option C is wrong because UNEP owns the Emissions Gap Report and the Global Environment Outlook but not this index. Option D is wrong because the World Bank publishes development statistics and reports on the cost of environmental damage, not the Environmental Performance Index. Keep Yale with performance and Germanwatch with risk.

The correct answer is B, the Bhopal gas tragedy. On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaked from a pesticide plant at Bhopal and killed thousands of people in the surrounding settlements, and India keeps 2 December as National Pollution Control Day in memory of the victims and as a reminder of the need for industrial safety. Option A is wrong because the Chernobyl nuclear accident happened in April 1986 in the Soviet Union and is not the occasion for an Indian observance. Option C is wrong because Minamata disease, caused by mercury poisoning of a bay in Japan, gave its name to the Minamata Convention on mercury but not to this day. Option D is wrong because the Chipko movement of the 1970s in the Himalaya was a forest protection movement and has no date in this calendar.

The correct answer is C, St Petersburg. The tiger range countries met at a summit in St Petersburg in Russia in 2010 and agreed to work towards doubling the number of wild tigers, and 29 July was adopted as International Tiger Day, also called Global Tiger Day, at that meeting. Option A is wrong because New Delhi has hosted tiger conferences and is the seat of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, but the day itself was not declared there. Option B is wrong because Nairobi is the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme and the city where the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted, which is remembered on 22 May instead. Option D is wrong because Rio de Janeiro hosted the Earth Summit of 1992, from which World Water Day and the two Rio conventions came.

The correct answer is A, UNEP and WMO. The United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization jointly created the panel in 1988 to give governments a common scientific basis for climate policy. The panel conducts no research of its own: it assesses the published scientific literature and issues Assessment Reports, together with special reports on particular questions. Option B is wrong because UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization are concerned with education, culture, water and food, and they publish their own reports instead. Option C is wrong because IUCN and WWF are conservation bodies outside the United Nations system, responsible for the Red List and the Living Planet Report. Option D is wrong because the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are financial institutions and had no part in creating the panel.