Population, Development and Environment Questions and Answers

Answer: A

IPCC stands for Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change. It is a United Nations body set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to assess scientific knowledge on climate change.

The other expansions are not the name of the body: Inter-personal Communication Centre, International Panel for Climate Change and Indian Programme on Climate Change are not the IPCC.

Answer: A

Agenda 21 of the 1992 Earth Summit focused on sustainable development of natural resources. It is the plan of action adopted at Rio de Janeiro, with chapters on land, forests, water, oceans, biodiversity and waste.

Sustainable mountain development and sustainable agriculture are individual chapters within it, so each is only a part of its focus, and sustainable human development is a separate concept associated with the United Nations Development Programme.

Answer: A

Heavy reliance on fossil fuels is not a characteristic of a sustainable society, because fossil fuels are exhaustible and cause pollution and carbon emissions. A sustainable society relies on renewable sources.

Protecting species from extinction, practising resource conservation and recycling whenever possible are all features of a sustainable society, so they are not the answer.

Answer: B

The term sustainable development was brought into common use by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission, in its 1987 report Our Common Future, which defined it as development that meets present needs without compromising future generations.

The Rio conference of 1992 gave the idea wide currency afterwards but did not bring it into use, and the United States Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency are national agencies.

Answer: A

The matching is eradicating extreme poverty and hunger with halving the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar per day, reducing child mortality with cutting the under-five mortality rate by two thirds, improving maternal health with cutting the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters, and ensuring environmental sustainability with integrating sustainable development into policies, which is the code i ii iii iv.

Each of the other codes gives a target to the wrong goal, for example the maternal mortality target to child mortality.

Answer: B

The wastes match their sources as solid waste with domestic garbage, liquid effluent with leather processing units, noxious gases with petrochemical industries, and ash with the glass industry, which is the code iii iv ii i. Households produce solid waste, tanneries discharge liquid effluent, and petrochemical plants give off noxious gases.

The other codes assign the sources to the wrong wastes, such as domestic garbage to ash.

Answer: B

Ester Boserup's view is that agricultural innovations are pulled forward by population growth, which is the postulate of innovation pull and population push. As population grows and land becomes scarce, farmers shift to more intensive methods, so population pressure leads to innovation, not the other way round.

The options that have innovation pushing the population, or that leave either one unchanged, do not reflect her argument, which was set against the Malthusian view that food supply limits population.

Answer: B

In ascending order of poverty for 1993-94 the States are Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, which is iv, i, ii, iii.

From the table for 1993-94, Punjab has 11.77, Andhra Pradesh 22.19, Gujarat 24.21 and Karnataka 33.16. Reading from the lowest figure to the highest gives the order iv, i, ii, iii.

The first option puts Punjab last, though its poverty is lowest. The third and fourth options put Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh in the wrong place, as Karnataka's figure is the highest of the four.

Answer: C

Orissa showed the highest poverty level in 1973-74 among the four States named.

The table gives, for 1973-74, Orissa 66.18 per cent, West Bengal 63.43, Madhya Pradesh 61.78 and Kerala 59.79. Comparing the four figures, Orissa's is the largest, higher than West Bengal's by nearly three points.

West Bengal is the nearest wrong choice, being second highest. Madhya Pradesh is third, and Kerala, at 59.79, is the lowest of the four, so neither can be the answer. Note that Bihar (61.91) is above Madhya Pradesh in the table, but it is not offered among the options.

Answer: B

Punjab had the lowest poverty among the four States named in 2004-05.

The table gives Punjab 8.4 per cent for 2004-05, Haryana 14.0, Andhra Pradesh 15.8 and Assam 19.7. Reading the four figures, Punjab's 8.4 is clearly the smallest, and it is also the lowest in the whole table of fifteen States.

Haryana is the next lowest of the options and so the most likely wrong answer. Andhra Pradesh is higher still, and Assam, at 19.7, is the highest of the four, so it cannot have shown the lowest poverty.