Environment & Biodiversity Current Affairs MCQs

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The Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) will become one of the world’s largest general-purpose observatories, once it is constructed. The proposed site for its location is over the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii islands, which is a sacred place for the island’s locals. Several protests are being witnessed demanding to shift the construction of the observatory to some other place.
India is also a member of the collaboration of the research institutions and governments and has committed 10 % of the project resources. India recently announced that it would like the project to move to an alternate and appropriate place.

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Carbon Disclosure Project-India (CDP), an environmental non-profit organisation released its annual report of 2018, titled “Corporates #StepUp Climate Action”. As per the report, 25 companies committed to science-based targets in alignment with the Paris Agreement by December 2018. This has earned the 5th rank to India, which is only after the US, Japan, Britain and France in corporate climate action.
The report examines carbon reduction activities of companies and revealed that 58 Indian companies of the 59 firms surveyed between 2018 and 2019, have board-level oversight of climate-related issues.

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The Supreme Court of India recently permitted the Centre to introduce the ‘African Cheetahs’ to the appropriate habitats in India. As the Asiatic cheetah, commonly called as the Indian Cheetah, has become almost extinct, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) filed a petition, which sought permission for introducing African Cheetahs to India.
The bench headed by the Chief Justice S A Bobde also set up a committee with three members from Wildlife Institute of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests, which will guide the NTCA in this regard.

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The Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar recently announced that 10 more Indian wetlands have been declared as sites of international importance by Ramsar. The number of wetlands with Ramsar site tag has now increased to a total of 37. The total surface area covered by the 37 Ramsar sites is also increased more than 1 million hectares.
In the new declaration, Maharashtra gets the first Ramsar site tag for Nandur Madhameshwar. Punjab added 3 more sites and now has a total of 6 sites while Uttar Pradesh added 6 new sites and now has 7 Ramsar sites. The Ramsar Convention was signed by the member countries to preserve the ecological significance of their wetlands.

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Renowned environmental economist and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Goodwill Ambassador Pavan Sukhdev has been awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, for this year.
The award was instituted in 1973 and is otherwise known as the Nobel prize for environment. Pavan Sukhdev shares the prestigious award with another conservation biologist from the United States, Gretchen Daily. Sukhdev is only the third Indian in the last decade to receive this coveted award. His report on ‘The Economics of Environment and Biodiversity’ was the base for the Green Economy movement of UNEP.

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The World Wetlands Day is observed annually on February 2 across the world. On 2 February 1971, the Convention on Wetlands was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar. From then, the day has been observed annually on the same date.
The theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day is “Wetlands and Biodiversity”. Recently, 10 more wetlands of India are included in the ‘Ramsar site’ list. With this, India has 37 Ramsar sites totally, which cover more than 1 million hectares of area in the country.

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Esperanza Base (Hope Base) is a permanent, all-year-round Argentine research station in Hope Bay, Trinity Peninsula in Antarctica.

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Alternaria brassicae is a fungus that causes blight in the Mustard and Rapeseed crops. Yield in a field infected by fungus Alternaria brassicae can come down by as much as by 47 per cent, if remedial measures are not taken.

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Kaamya Karthikeyan a student from Mumbai, recently became the youngest girl in the world to scale Mt Aconcagua. Mt Aconcagua is the highest peak in South America, located in Argentina. It is the highest peak outside Asia with the height of 6962 metres.
The student of Navy children school has already scaled the some of the highest peaks in Africa, Europe, and Australia in the past.

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The Forest department of Madhya Pradesh has recently radio-tagged an Indian Pangolin for the first time, on the occasion of World Pangolin Day, February 15, 2020.
It was tagged by the forest department and a non-profit agency the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), to know its ecology and develop a plan to conserve the species. World Pangolin Day is celebrated every year, on the third Saturday of February.