Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Impact of climate change

News

• The Mediterranean Basin is experiencing the impact of climate change more than ever owing to multiple environmental changes and risks that are affecting the livelihoods of people in the entire region, warn researchers.

Findings

• The risks posed by climate change in the Mediterranean Sea were underestimated till date because each was only examined independently.
• In reality, they are interconnected and interact with social and economic problems exacerbating their impacts so they all have to be addressed at the same time and within the same financial constraints.
• The study explored that climate worsened the existing environmental problems caused by land use changes such as urbanisation and agricultural intensification, increasing pollution and declining biodiversity.
• In addition, due to climate change alone, the irrigation demands in the region are projected to increase between 4 and 18 per cent by the end of the century.
• While population growth is likely to escalate from 22 to 74 per cent, tourism development, new industries and urban sprawl may increase water pollution too.
• Average temperatures in this region have already risen by 1.4 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era – 0.4 degrees Celsius more than the global average.
• According to the study, food production from agriculture and fisheries across the Mediterranean region is also changing due to the social, economic and environmental changes.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Arunachal safe as China river barrier breaches again

News

• The Disaster Management Department in Arunachal Pradesh marked the central part of the State safe after water from Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo river over-topped a landslide-induced barrier in the morning and started flowing downstream.

Beyond News

• A landslide in the Milin section of the river had created a 1.7 km barrier, temporarily blocking the flow of water towards Arunachal Pradesh. A landslide of bigger intensity in the same section had created a 3.5 km barrier.
• The Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Siang after entering India and flows through three districts of Arunachal Pradesh Upper Siang, Siang and East Siang before meeting two other rivers to form the Brahmaputra in Assam downstream.
• However, the heads of the districts through which the Siang river meanders have been asked to ensure people do not venture out to the river for any purpose until the flow of water becomes normal.

India to host key meetings ahead of Poland climate talks

News

• Ahead of the December climate talks in Katowice, Poland, India is hosting two key meetings in New Delhi with a group of countries called the LMDC, the ‘Like Minded Developing Countries’ (India, China, Venezuela and Iran) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China), which are networks that have been formed to lend weight to the concerns of the developing countries.

Beyond News

• The Conference of Parties (COP), a league of at least 190 countries signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), meets annually to discuss ways to address issues related to climate change.
• India was having discussions with at least 40 countries, including China, to forge alliances and compel developed countries to make good on promises, made over the years, to provide enough finance and technology to stem global warming.

50 Indian items face heat as U.S. revokes duty-free privileges on import of 90 products

News

• The S. revoked duty-free concessions on import of at least 50 Indian products, mostly from handloom and agriculture sectors, reflecting the Trump administration’s tough stand on trade-related issues with New Delhi.

Beyond News

• The federal register issued a notification, listing out 90 products which were so far subject to duty-free provisions under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
• S. President Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation on Tuesday, leading to the removal of these products from the privilege beginning November 1.
• A review of the products indicates that the presidential proclamation is not country specific, but product specific.
• With India being the largest beneficiary of the GSP, it has been hit the most by the latest decision of the Trump administration.
• The GSP, the largest and oldest U.S. trade preference programme, is designed to promote economic development by allowing duty-free entry for thousands of products from designated beneficiary countries.
• A count of these products indicated that at least 50 of them are from India. Notably, India is the largest beneficiary of the GSP. In 2017, India’s duty-free export to the U.S. under the GSP was to the tune of more than $5.6 billion.
• Products from other countries like Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Suriname, Pakistan, Turkey, the Philippines, Ecuador and Indonesia have also been removed from the GSP list.
• Some of the prominent Indian products removed from the duty-free provisions of the GSP include dried pigeon pea seed; areca nuts, fresh or dried, in shell; turpentine gum; mangoes, prepared or preserved by vinegar or acetic acid; sandstone, merely cut into blocks or slabs of a rectangular (including square) shape; tin chlorides; barium chlorides; salts and esters of tartaric acid, nesoi; and trimethyl phosphite.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

461 elephants electrocuted between 2009 and 2017

News

• Between August to October 2018, more than a dozen of elephants died of electrocution in the eastern and northeastern part of India, including seven in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district.

Beyond News

• While human-elephant conflict remains a major concern for policy makers and conservationists, electrocution of elephants is turning out to be a critical area in the management of India’s elephant population.
• A total of 461 elephant deaths due to electrocution occurred in the nine years between 2009 and November 2017.
• Karnataka, which has the highest population of elephants, has recorded the highest causalities in elephant deaths by electrocution, numbering 106.
• Representatives of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), who along with the MOEFCC’s Project Elephant had come out with a publication on the right of passage in 101 elephant corridors of the country in 2017, stressed on the need for greater surveillance and protection of elephant corridors.
• Explaining why the east-central and northeastern parts of the country are witnessing greater number of incidents of human-elephant conflict, elephants are expanding base all across the country and moving out of forests towards agricultural areas.
• Along with taking measures to stop illegal electrical fencing, and having proper guidelines for maintaining the height of high tension electrical wires.
• According to the all-India synchronised census of elephants in 2017, their population was 27, 312. The States with the highest elephant population are Karnataka (6,049), followed by Assam (5,719) and Kerala (3,054).

Indian, US satellites find black hole that spins near maximum possible rates

News

• Scientists using data from India’s first dedicated astronomy satellite, AstroSat, and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found that a black hole in the binary star system 4U 1630-47 spins close to the maximum possible rate.

Findings

• Relatively smaller black holes are exotic end states of massive stellar cores.
• The gravity of such a collapsing core is so strong that its entire mass is crushed into a point.
• This point, however, cannot be directly seen, because nothing, not even light, can escape from a region around it, thus justifying the name of the object.
• Surprisingly, astronomical black holes are the simplest known objects in the universe, because they can be fully characterised by only two properties, mass and spin rate.
• Therefore, measurements of these two properties are uniquely important to probe some extreme aspects of the universe, and the fundamental physics related to them, researchers said.
• AstroSat was launched in 2015 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is the first dedicated astronomy satellite of India, and the SXT aboard AstroSat is the first Indian X-ray telescope.

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