UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment met at Stockholm in June 1972 and was the first global gathering to treat the environment as a subject of international policy.

The Basel Convention was adopted in 1989 after public anger at the export of toxic waste from industrialised countries to poorer ones, and it requires prior informed consent from the importing state before such a shipment may be made.

The Paris Agreement was adopted at the twenty-first Conference of the Parties in 2015 and entered into force in 2016.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third Conference of the Parties to the framework convention on climate change, held at Kyoto in Japan in 1997.

It was agreed at Washington in 1973 and came into force in 1975.

The Montreal Protocol was adopted in 1987 under the Vienna Convention of 1985 and entered into force in 1989. It fixed timetables for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, halons, carbon tetrachloride and other ozone depleting chemicals, with later deadlines for developing countries.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly called the Earth Summit, met at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and adopted Agenda 21, a detailed non-binding programme of action for sustainable development.

The Polar Code is the International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters, adopted by the International Maritime Organization and in force since the beginning of 2017.

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed in 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar and came into force in 1975.

The Fourth Buddhist Council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. Vasumitra presided over it and Ashvaghosha acted as his deputy, and its work of collecting commentaries on the canon went with the open division of Buddhism into the Mahayana and Hinayana schools.

The Nasik cave inscription praising Gautamiputra Satakarni was issued in the name of his mother Gautami Balashri, in the reign of her grandson.

Milindapanho means the questions of Milinda, and Milinda is the Indian name of the Indo-Greek king Menander, who ruled in the north-west in the second century BCE.

The Junagadh rock inscription of about 150 CE was issued by Rudradaman I, the Shaka ruler of the Western Kshatrapa line.

Brihadratha was the last ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. About 185 BCE his own commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Sunga killed him, according to tradition at a review of the army, and took the throne at Pataliputra.

The panel showing the submission of the mad elephant Nalagiri, sent by Devadatta to kill the Buddha and calmed by him in the street of Rajagriha, is among the best known carvings of the Amaravati stupa on the lower Krishna in Andhra Pradesh.

The Gathasaptasati, also written as Gatha Saptasati, is an anthology of seven hundred short verses compiled by the Satavahana king Hala.

Ashvaghosha was a Buddhist monk and Sanskrit poet at the court of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. He wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha in Sanskrit verse, and the Saundarananda, and he acted as deputy to Vasumitra at the Fourth Buddhist Council held in Kashmir.

Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all.

The main Kushana capital was Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, which Kanishka I developed as his seat of power. As the empire spread into the Ganga-Yamuna plain, Mathura on the Yamuna became its second capital and the southern headquarters of the family.

Nominal GDP is measured at current prices and real GDP at the prices of a base year, so the ratio between them isolates the effect of the change in prices.