Amazon Quiz

Notes:
The World Bank has issued the world’s first carbon removal bond to support Amazon reforestation. The bond is worth $225 million and has a nine-year term. Investors’ returns are tied to the amount of carbon removed by new trees, not just emission reductions from preventing deforestation. This bond aims to protect the Amazon by financially incentivizing reforestation efforts.

Notes:
IBM has expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch an innovation lab in Bengaluru to help mutual clients derive value from the latest technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
The first of its kind innovation lab, is open to clients from around the world to explore joint IBM-AWS solutions and test prototypes and proof-of-concepts relevant across industries such as banking and financial services, automotive, manufacturing and healthcare, among others.

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NESTS (Ministry of Tribal Affairs), in partnership with Amazon India and Learning Links Foundation, introduces the second phase of the ‘Amazon Future Engineer Programme’ for EMRSs (Eklavya Model Residential Schools).
This endeavor holds the promise of narrowing the educational disparity within tribal communities and paving the way for their prosperous careers in emerging technologies.

Notes:
This year’s Amazon Summit was held in the Brazilian city of Belém, in which the Amazon nations discussed how the rainforest is managed.
On the final day of the summit, 12 countries have called on wealthy nations to meet their climate funding obligations. A joint statement issued during the summit, called for the development of a financing mechanism which the international community could pay for the critical services provided by forests.

Notes:
The Congo, which is the world’s second-largest rainforest after Amazon, continues to retreat according to recent report.
The forest is spread across six African countries, the largest of which is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has lost half a million hectares (mha) of forest last year, according to the report.

Notes:
The Amazon Fund was created to raise donations for investments in efforts to prevent deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Fund is managed by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), which performs raising and investing funds.
The UK government recently announced the contribution of more than 101 million USD to this initiative.

Notes:
The Amazon Fund was not established under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) but is a Brazilian initiative for REDD+ efforts. While the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) manages the fund, statement 2 is misleading as it implies sole public funding and ignores other actors. Thus, neither statement is entirely correct as per official sources.

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Reserve Bank of India has imposed a penalty of Rs 3.06 crore on Amazon Pay (India) Private Limited for non-compliance of certain directions related to Prepaid Payment Instruments and Know Your Customer.

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E-commerce giant Amazon announced that it will join the Indian government’s ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) platform, and as part of its initial collaboration will integrate its Smart Commerce and logistics services with the ONDC network. Amazon logistics services include pickup and delivery, while Smart Commerce is a suite of SaaS (software-as-a-service) products hosted on AWS that can assist MSMEs to build and scale their business and integrate it with the ONDC network.

Notes:
A new report ‘Teleconnections Among Tipping Elements in the Earth System’ Report, has found a direct link between deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the temperature changes in Tibet.
Tibet is situated more than 15,000 km from the rainforest. It revealed the strong link between climate tipping elements. A tipping point is a threshold beyond which major, irreversible changes occur in a specific region.