UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Coal forms by the slow burial and compression of plant matter, and the longer and deeper the process goes the more carbon is left behind as moisture and volatile matter are driven off.

Liquefied petroleum gas is obtained during the refining of petroleum and from natural gas processing, and it is chiefly a mixture of butane and propane, which liquefy under moderate pressure at ordinary temperature and so can be stored in a cylinder.

Its calorific value is about 150 kilojoules per gram, the highest of any known fuel, roughly three times that of petrol, and its only combustion product is water vapour, which makes it a clean fuel as well.

In this zone the supply of air is unrestricted, so combustion is complete and all the carbon of the fuel is converted to carbon dioxide, releasing the maximum heat.

Calorific value is the heat released on completely burning one gram of a substance, and among the four foods listed ghee has the highest, because it is almost entirely fat.

In spontaneous combustion a substance catches fire by itself, without any external flame being brought near it.

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…

Goal 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, and it expressly recognises the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as the primary international forum for negotiating the global response.

The 2030 Agenda sets out seventeen goals, and the targets attached to them number 169 in all, progress on which is tracked through a separately agreed global indicator framework.

The resolution titled Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, and the goals came into force from 1 January 2016, with 2030 as the deadline.

This was the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, and it is therefore also called the Brundtland Report; the sentence quoted in the question is taken from it word for word and is the standard definition used in every…

The 2030 Agenda has seventeen goals, and space research is not among them; the agenda is concerned with poverty, hunger, health, education, equality, water, energy, work, infrastructure, inequality, cities, consumption, climate, oceans, land, peace and partnerships.

Goal 10 is Reduced Inequalities, which is item 3; Goal 13 is Climate Action, which corresponds to climate change, item 1; Goal 14 is Life Below Water, item 4; and Goal 15 is Life on Land, item 2.

The Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee are called the twin sisters of financial control because together they cover both ends of the spending cycle.

Article 97 provides that the salaries and allowances of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the House of the People and of the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman of the Council of States shall be such as Parliament may by law determine, and these are charged on the Consolidated…