Reports and Indices Current Affairs MCQs

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The United Nations Development Progrmme (UNDP) has released a report titled “The State of Climate Ambition”, which has observed that close to 93% of Least developed countries (LDCs) have submitted enhanced national climate pledges. The report is released ahead of the upcoming COP26 climate negotiations.
The report makes a comparative study between the current climate trends and the assessment made in the 2019 NDC Global Outlook report.

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Public Affairs Centre (PAC), a Bengaluru-based non-profit think tank releases the Public Affairs Index every year. In this year’s Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021), Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have taken the top three positions, among the 18 large states in governance performance.
The index is based on scores secured by the states in governance performance across the pillars of equity, growth and sustainability. Covid-19 response index has been added to this year’s index for the first time. Sikkim, Goa and Mizoram are winners among the small states, Puducherry, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh topped among the UTs.

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The journal Nature Communications has recently released a publication regarding flash droughts, in which it is mentioned that the majority of flash drought events in India between 1980-2015 occurred in monsoon.
Flash floods are the rapid intensification of drought in a region, which is accompanied by poor precipitation and abnormally high temperatures.

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The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) released the ‘Levels and trends in child mortality: Report 2021’.
As per the report, more than 5 million children died before reaching their fifth birthday in 2020. Almost half of those deaths, 2.4 million, occurred among newborns. On current trends, more than 48 million children younger than 5 will die before 2030, half of them newborns.

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United Nations Women recently released a new report titled ‘Women and girls left behind: Glaring gaps in pandemic responses’.
As per the report, women were less likely to receive COVID-19 relief from government. At least 29 per cent of working mothers living with children lost their jobs compared to 20 per cent of working men living with children. Single women living with children were left behind more, as per the report.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released the second part of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’.
It was also called an “Atlas of human suffering”, as per the UN Head. The report was compiled by 270 authors from 67 countries. As per the report, Cities which house more than half of the world’s population — are at the highest risk from climate change.

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A recent report prepared by environmental platform Climate Trends has pointed out that India has the lowest rate of insurance penetration across Asia
The Indian insurance companies were among the worst performers scoring below 10 per cent for the quality of their disclosures. Indian insurance companies failed to pay close to three-fourths of the claimed amount for Cyclone Amphan, which hit the West Bengal during May 2021.

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Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, said that India tops the world in terms of number of persons killed in road accidents.
Based on the latest issue of the World Road Statistics (WRS) 2018, of the International Road Federation, Geneva, India ranks third as per number of accidents and third in number of persons injured in road accidents.

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The United Nations recently launched its ‘Energy Plan of Action’ to gain clean, affordable energy for all by 2030. The UN also announced a new Energy Compact Action Network.
The plan calls for collective action by 30 entities of the world and international organizations to achieve the pledge made at the High-level Dialogue on Energy 2021. It includes gaining access for 500 million more people to electricity and 1 billion more to clean cooking solutions, the creation of 30 million jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2025.

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According to the National e-governance service delivery assessment (NeSDA) report, Kerala had the highest overall compliance score amongst all states.
Jammu and Kashmir, assessed for the first time, ranked the highest among Union Territories. Meghalaya and Nagaland are the leading state portals among the northeast and hilly states. The overall score of Tamil Nadu increased the most in 2021 compared to 2019.