General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - May 2019

May 2019

Nov 24, 2019

Oxford Names 'Climate Emergency' Its 2019 Word Of The Year

Oxford Dictionaries has named "climate emergency" as its 2019 Word of the Year, choosing it from an all-environmental shortlist that also included "climate action," "climate denial," "eco-anxiety," "extinction" and "flight shame."
The Word of the Year citation is intended to highlight "a word or expression shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance." Recent winners have included "toxic," "youthquake," "post-truth" and "vape."

Nov 19, 2019

New Hope For Trees Affected By Ash Dieback

Scientists say there is new hope in the fight against a disease that is devastating ash trees.
A study has identified the genes that give trees resistance to ash dieback, which arrived in the UK in 2012 and has now spread to almost every part of the country.
The discovery suggests that trees could now be bred that are unaffected by the epidemic.
The research is published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Nov 18, 2019

Newly Discovered Eel Sets a Jolting Record For Animal Voltage

Electric eels are fish with organs that can generate an electric charge. Scientists thought all electric eels belonged to one species. But a new study has found there are three. And one of the new species unleashes the highest voltage of any known animal.
Electric eels use strong zaps to defend themselves and take down prey. They also send out weaker pulses to sense hidden prey and communicate with each other.
One of the newly found species has been named Electrophorus voltai. It can deliver a shocking 860 volts.
That's way higher than the 650 volts recorded for eels — back when they were all called E. electricus.

Nov 16, 2019

Longest Bad Air Spell in Two Years

People in Delhi breathed 'severely' polluted air for the fourth day, braving the longest spell of hazardous air quality in two years as officials grappled with a crisis that seemed immune to any of their interventions – with a change in weather conditions now being seen as the only hope.
The Supreme Court pulled up the governments of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi to explain why efforts such as a ban on burning crop residue and odd-even vehicle rationing did not help, and ordered scientists to consider installing air purification towers.
The court also recorded in their order that the Delhi government's odd-even scheme barely had any impact on the high pollution levels in the Capital, and asked the Aam Aadmi Party government to submit a detailed affidavit underlining what measures it can take further.
The hearing came on a day when predictions that pollution would decrease due to a pick-up in wind speed failed to materialise, and pollution forecasters said the situation may not increase by much over the weekend.

Centre Drops Plan to Bring in Changes to Forest Act of 1927

The Union Environment Ministry withdrew a draft amendment that proposed updates to the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Activist groups and some state governments had protested this proposed law after it was mooted in March 2019.
The Indian Forest Act, 2019, was envisaged as an amendment to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, and an attempt to address contemporary challenges to the country's forests. The draft law had been sent to key forest officers in the states for soliciting comments and objections.

Nov 14, 2019

India gets USD 43 million from Green Climate Fund

In a move that may positively impact over 10 million people living on the coastline, India kicked-off a USD 43 million project to boost climate resilience in three coastal states in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The project is funded by the Green Climate Fund, established within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries.
The six-year project will build climate-resilient livelihoods for 1.7 million people in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha, offset 3.5 million tonnes of carbon, protect vulnerable ecosystems, and benefit another 10 million people with improved shoreline protection.

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