Population, Development and Environment Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The two compounds of acid rain are sulphuric acid and nitric acid. Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the burning of fuel and from industry react with water vapour in the air to form these acids, which fall as acid rain. Carbon dioxide gives only a weak carbonic acid, which is present in natural rain, and nitrogen and water are not acids. Option B is correct.

Answer: C

Improving the health of aged persons is not a Millennium Development Goal. The goals were to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. Gender equality and environmental sustainability are in the list, so option C is correct.

Answer: B

Crop irrigation has the highest water use of the four. Agriculture takes the largest share of the fresh water withdrawn, in the world and in India, where irrigation uses well over three quarters of the water used. Industries use a much smaller share, in India mostly for cooling and processing, households use water for drinking, cooking and sanitation at a still smaller level, and recreation uses very little. Option B is correct.

Answer: B

According to the 2011 Census, about 86 percent of households have access to safe drinking water. The figure for 2001 was lower, at about 78 percent, and the rise came from the spread of tap water and hand pumps. Values of 70 and 52 percent are too low to be the Census figure, and 93 percent is too high. Option B is correct.

Answer: B

When excessive quantities of carbon dioxide, water vapour and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere reflect heat back to the earth's surface, the result is the greenhouse effect. These gases trap the heat radiated from the earth and raise the temperature of the lower atmosphere. Acid rain comes from sulphur and nitrogen oxides, desertification is the degradation of land in dry areas, and solar introspection is not a term in the subject. Option B is correct.

Answer: D

The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals with forty-eight indicators, which is option D. The goals, adopted from the Millennium Declaration of 2000, were to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. Options A, B and C give too few goals, and so are wrong, since the figure of eight is fixed by the list above.

Answer: C

A theory is a systematic explanation of relationships among variables, it explains causal relationships among them, and it gives a basis for policy, so statements I, II and III are correct. Statement IV is not, because no theory explains all the factors that influence economic growth; every theory abstracts from some of them. So I, II and III only is correct.

Answer: A

In the Harrod-Domar model the growth rate equals the saving rate divided by the capital output ratio, so growth is directly related to savings and inversely related to the capital output ratio. The option that reverses the relationships has the capital output ratio raising growth, and the other two options do not state the direction of both correctly. So the first option is right.

Answer: B

Julian Simon argued that population growth causes technological progress, as more people means more minds to solve problems, and so he rejected the pessimism of the Limits to Growth study. He did not support the Club of Rome study, he did not use the second law of thermodynamics to say that progress is costless, and his view is not the classical one. So the second option is correct.

Answer: D

The key gives 28 percent as the fraction of the world's population on which development economics focuses its main attention, that is, the poorest part of the world. The other options, the whole population, two-thirds and one-third, are broader fractions that the key does not accept, so the last option is the answer given.