Environment Awards: Champions of the Earth and Goldman Prize

The correct answer is A, the United Nations Environment Programme, which instituted the award in 2005 and calls it the highest environmental honour of the United Nations. UNEP was created in 1972 after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and has its headquarters at Nairobi in Kenya. Option B is wrong because the World Wide Fund for Nature is a private conservation organisation, founded in 1961 with its secretariat at Gland in Switzerland, and it gives no such award. Option C is wrong because the International Union for Conservation of Nature, founded in 1948, is best known for the Red List of Threatened Species rather than for an award of this kind. Option D is wrong because the United Nations Development Programme works on poverty and governance and does not give this award. UNEP also publishes the Emissions Gap Report and the Global Environment Outlook.

The correct answer is B, Nairobi in Kenya. UNEP was set up in 1972 following the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, and placing its headquarters at Nairobi made it the first major organ of the United Nations with its head office in a developing country, and still the only large one based in Africa. Option A is wrong because Geneva hosts the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and the International Labour Organization, among others, but not UNEP. Option C is wrong because Rome is the seat of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Option D is wrong because Vienna hosts the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. The Stockholm Conference of 1972 also gave the world 5 June as World Environment Day.

The correct answer is B, grassroots environmental activists, one from each of six regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, the Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize was established in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman at San Francisco and first awarded in 1990, and it deliberately honours ordinary people rather than officials or researchers. Option A is wrong because policy leadership by governments is recognised by the Champions of the Earth award of UNEP, which is where a head of government would be honoured. Option C is wrong because research in environmental science is the field of the Tyler Prize, instituted in 1973. Option D is wrong because clean technology in industry is recognised in India by the Rajiv Gandhi Environment Award. Indian recipients include Medha Patkar, M. C. Mehta, Prafulla Samantara and Alok Shukla.

The correct answer is B, Medha Patkar, who led the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the Sardar Sarovar dam and the displacement it caused, and who received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1992, becoming the first Indian to win it. Option A is wrong because Sunderlal Bahuguna led the Chipko movement in the Himalaya and opposed the Tehri dam, but his honours were the Right Livelihood Award and the Padma Vibhushan rather than the Goldman Prize. Option C is wrong because Vandana Shiva, known for her work on seeds and biodiversity, received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. Option D is wrong because Rajendra Singh, the water conservationist of Alwar in Rajasthan called the waterman of India, won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001 and the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. Four names, four different awards: that is exactly how the question is built.

The correct answer is B, Hasdeo Aranya in Chhattisgarh, a large stretch of biodiversity rich forest in the Korba, Surajpur and Surguja districts, often called the lungs of Chhattisgarh. Alok Shukla, of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan and the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, organised the forest dwelling villages in a campaign that led the state to cancel twenty-one proposed coal blocks, and the prize followed in 2024. Option A is wrong because the Aarey campaign in Mumbai concerned a metro car shed and was a separate, urban struggle. Option C is wrong because Buxwaha in Madhya Pradesh was the site of a protest over a diamond mining project. Option D is wrong because Dehing Patkai in Assam, now a national park, saw a campaign over coal mining in an elephant reserve. All four are real campaigns, which is what makes this question hard.

The correct answer is B, the clean-up of Versova beach in Mumbai. Afroz Shah, a lawyer, began clearing plastic and other waste from the beach with a neighbour in 2015, and the weekly effort grew into a volunteer movement that removed thousands of tonnes of rubbish; UNEP honoured him in 2016 in the Inspiration and Action category and described it as among the largest beach clean-ups in the world. Option A is wrong because large tree planting drives in Rajasthan, though real, were not the ground for this award. Option C is wrong because the revival of stepwells and other traditional water structures is associated with separate water conservation efforts. Option D is wrong because work on the Yamuna floodplain belongs to a different set of campaigns around Delhi. Papers pair this question with Purnima Devi Barman and the hargila stork of Assam.

The correct answer is B, the greater adjutant stork, called hargila in Assam, one of the rarest storks in the world, whose remaining strongholds are in Assam and Bihar. Barman built a network of village women known as the Hargila Army to protect the tall trees in which the birds nest and to change the local view of a bird once treated as a bad omen; UNEP honoured her in the Entrepreneurial Vision category in 2022. Option A is wrong because the great Indian bustard is a critically endangered grassland bird of Rajasthan and Gujarat, the subject of a separate recovery programme. Option C is wrong because the Siberian crane, a winter visitor that stopped coming to Keoladeo in Bharatpur, is a conservation story of its own. Option D is wrong because the Amur falcon is the migratory raptor whose hunting was stopped at Pangti in Nagaland.

The correct answer is C, Lifetime Achievement. The ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who founded the Centre for Ecological Sciences at Bengaluru and chaired the expert panel that reported on the ecology of the Western Ghats, was honoured in 2024 for a career of research and advocacy rather than for a single project. Option A is wrong because Policy Leadership is the category in which Narendra Modi was honoured in 2018, jointly with Emmanuel Macron of France. Option B is wrong because Science and Innovation, though it fits a scientist at first glance, is given for a specific breakthrough or technology, and was not the category used here. Option D is wrong because Entrepreneurial Vision is the category of Cochin International Airport in 2018 and of Purnima Devi Barman in 2022. Gadgil had also received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2015.

The correct answer is B, Cochin International Airport, which became the world's first fully solar powered airport when it commissioned a large solar plant beside its runway, and was honoured by UNEP in 2018 in the Entrepreneurial Vision category. The airport is also notable as the first in India built through a public limited company with participation by the state government, non-resident Indians and the public. Option A is wrong because Delhi airport, large as it is and an early user of solar and green building standards, did not win this award. Option C is wrong because the Bengaluru airport is known for other sustainability measures but not for this honour. Option D is wrong because the Mumbai airport likewise has green initiatives of its own. In the same year Narendra Modi received the award in the Policy Leadership category, so 2018 brought India two laureates.

The correct answer is A, wildlife protection. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award was instituted in 1994 and is named after Amrita Devi, who in 1730 at Khejarli in Rajasthan died, along with hundreds of other Bishnois, resisting the felling of khejri trees ordered by the ruler of Jodhpur, and the community has protected trees and blackbuck ever since. Option B is wrong because water conservation is recognised through the National Water Awards and similar schemes. Option C is wrong because clean technology in industry is the subject of the Rajiv Gandhi Environment Award. Option D is wrong because research in forestry is recognised through institutional and scientific awards rather than this one. The broader national honour for environmental work is the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, instituted in 1987 and given by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The correct answer is B, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which instituted the award in 1987 for outstanding contribution to the protection of the environment by an individual or an organisation. Option A is wrong because the NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission in 2015, is a policy think tank and does not confer this award. Option C is wrong although it is the closest trap: the Central Pollution Control Board, set up under the Water Act of 1974, monitors pollution and sets standards but works under the Ministry rather than giving this award in its own name. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Science and Technology administers scientific honours such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. The same Ministry of Environment also gives the Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award and the Rajiv Gandhi Environment Award for Clean Technology.

The correct answer is B, the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, the home of the Dongria Kondh, a particularly vulnerable tribal group that holds the hill sacred. Samantara pursued a twelve year legal battle that ended with the recognition of the community's rights and the blocking of a proposed open pit bauxite mine, and the Goldman Prize followed in 2017. Option A is wrong because the Aravalli range, running across Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi, is the subject of a separate struggle over illegal mining and construction. Option C is wrong because the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, home of the Chenchus, saw a campaign against uranium exploration. Option D is wrong because the Khasi hills are in Meghalaya and are associated with questions over coal mining in the state. Niyamgiri is also the case in which the Supreme Court directed that the gram sabhas decide.