State of the World’s Birds Report
Context:
The State of the World’s Birds, an annual review of environmental resources published recently by nine natural sciences and avian specialists across the globe, has revealed that the population of 48% of the 10,994 surviving species of birds is declining.
Relevance:
GS III- Environment and Ecology ( Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation)
Dimensions of the Article:
- About State of the World’s Birds
- Key findings of the study:
- Importance of birds to ecosystems and culture
- Threats contributing to avian biodiversity loss
About State of the World’s Birds
- Manchester Metropolitan University is the publisher of the report.
- It presents an overview of how our understanding of bird biodiversity has evolved and how threatened it is.
- The research is based on BirdLife International’s most recent evaluation of all birds for the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Key findings of the study:
- The study found that 5,245 or about 48% of the existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines.
- While 4,295 or 39% of the species have stable trends, about 7% or 778 species have increasing population trends.
- The trend of 37 species was unknown.
- The study draws from BirdLife International’s latest assessment of all birds for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List that shows 1,481 or 13.5% species are currently threatened with global extinction.
- These include 798 species classified as vulnerable, 460 as endangered and 223 as critically endangered while 52 species were considered to be data deficient.
- About 73% species are estimated to have fewer than 10,000 mature individuals, 40% have fewer than 2,500 mature individuals, and almost 5% have fewer than 50 mature individuals.
- The bird species are non-randomly threatened across the avian tree of life, with richness of threatened species disproportionately high among families such as parrots, pheasants and allies, albatrosses and allies, rails, cranes, cracids, grebes, megapodes, and pigeons.
- The more threatened bird species (86.4%) are found in tropical than in temperate latitudes (31.7%), with hotspots for threatened species concentrated in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands.
Importance of birds to ecosystems and culture
- Birds contribute toward many ecosystem services that either directly or indirectly benefit humanity.
- These include provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.
- The functional role of birds within ecosystems as pollinators, seed-dispersers, ecosystem engineers, scavengers and predators not only facilitate accrual and maintenance of biodiversity but also support human endeavours such as sustainable agriculture via pest control besides aiding other animals to multiply.
- For instance, coral reef fish productivity has been shown to increase as seabird colonies recovered following rat eradication in the Chagos archipelago.
- Wild birds and products derived from them are also economically important as food (meat, eggs).
- Approximately 45% of all extant bird species are used in some way by people, primarily as pets (37%) and for food (14%).
- Beyond its symbolic and artistic values, birdwatching is a global pastime practised by millions of people. Garden bird-feeding is valued at $5-6 billion per year and growing by four per cent annually.
Threats contributing to avian biodiversity loss
- The study lists eight factors, topped by land cover and land-use change.
- The continued growth of human populations and of per capita rates of consumption lead directly to conversion and degradation of primary natural habitats.
- Deforestation has been driven by afforestation with plantations (often of non-native species) plus land abandonment in parts of the global North, with net loss in the tropics.
- The other factors are habitat fragmentation, degradation, hunting and trapping.
Depreciation of Indian Rupee
Context:
The Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 77.44 against the U.S. Dollar.
Relevance:
GS-III: Indian Economy (Capital Market, Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy)
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is Currency Depreciation and what are it causes
- Impact of the drop
- Reasons for Current Depreciation of Indian Rupee
What is Currency Depreciation and what are it causes?
- Currency depreciation is a fall in the value of a currency in terms of its exchange rate versus other currencies.
- Economic fundamentals, interest rate differentials, political instability, or risk aversion can cause currency depreciation.
- Orderly currency depreciation can increase a country’s export activity as its products and services become cheaper to buy.
- Currency depreciation in one country can spread to other countries.
- Countries with weak economic fundamentals, such as chronic current account deficits and high rates of inflation, generally have depreciating currencies. Currency depreciation, if orderly and gradual, improves a nation’s export competitiveness and may improve its trade deficit over time. But an abrupt and sizable currency depreciation may scare foreign investors who fear the currency may fall further, leading them to pull portfolio investments out of the country. These actions will put further downward pressure on the currency.
- Easy monetary policy and high inflation are two of the leading causes of currency depreciation. When interest rates are low, hundreds of billions of dollars chase the highest yield. Expected interest rate differentials can trigger a bout of currency depreciation.
- Central banks will increase interest rates to combat inflation as too much inflation can lead to currency depreciation.
- Additionally, inflation can lead to higher input costs for exports, which then makes a nation’s exports less competitive in the global markets. This will widen the trade deficit and cause the currency to depreciate
Impact of the drop
- Depreciation in rupee is a double-edged sword for the Reserve Bank of India.
- While a weaker currency may support exports amid a nascent economic recovery from the pandemic, it poses risk of imported inflation, and may make it difficult for the central bank to maintain interest rates at a record low for longer.
Reasons for Current Depreciation of Indian Rupee
- The rupee depreciated due to a sell-off in global equity markets sparked by the US Federal Reserve’s (central bank) interest rate hike, the war in Europe, and growth fears in China because to the Covid-19 surge.
- The outflow of dollars is a result of rising crude prices, and the stock market correction is also contributing to the negative flow of dollars.
- The RBI’s actions to tighten monetary policy in response to growing inflation have resulted in depreciation.
Pulitzer Prize
Context:
A team of four Indian photographers from Reuters news agency — slain photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave — have won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for their coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in India.
Relevance:
GS I- Personalities in News
Dimensions of the Article:
- About Pulitzer Prize
- Who was Joseph Pulitzer, after whom the awards are named?
- Indians who have previously won the Pulitzer
About Pulitzer Prize
- The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States.
- It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of American (Hungarian-born) Joseph Pulitzer who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.
- It is Administered by Columbia University in New York City.
- Prizes are awarded yearly in 21 categories. The winner in the public service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal.
Who was Joseph Pulitzer, after whom the awards are named?
- Born to a wealthy family of Magyar-Jewish origin in Mako, Hungary, in 1847, Joseph Pulitzer had a stint in the military before he built a reputation of being a “tireless journalist”.
- In the late 1860s he joined the German-language daily newspaper Westliche Post, and by 25 he had become a publisher.
- In 1978, he became the owner of St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
- Under him, the paper published several “investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers”.
- In 1883, he also negotiated the purchase of The New York World, which was in financial straits, and elevated its circulation.
- In 1884, he was elected to the US House of Representatives from New York’s ninth district as a Democrat and entered office on March 4, 1885.
- During his tenure, he led a movement to place the newly gifted Statue of Liberty in New York City.
Indians who have previously won the Pulitzer
- A member of the Ghadar Party in America, Indian-American journalist Gobind Behari Lal, was the first from India to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1937.
- He won the award for reporting with four others, for their coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University. A postgraduate from University of California, Berkeley, he also received the Padma Bhushan in 1969.
- In 2003, Mumbai-born Geeta Anand was part of the team at Wall Street Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on corporate corruption,
- In 2016, Indian-American Sanghamitra Kalita, then managing editor of Los Angeles Times, won the Pulitzer in the Breaking News Reporting category with her team for their coverage of the San Bernardino shooting in California in 2015 and the terror investigation that followed.
- In 2000, London-born Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.
- In 2020, Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press won the Pulitzer in the Feature Photography category “for striking images captured during a communications blackout in Kashmir depicting life in the contested territory as India stripped it of its semi-autonomy,”
Ethanol Blending
Context:
The level of ethanol blending in petrol in India has reached 9.99%.
Relevance:
GS-III: Environment and Ecology, GS-III: Industry and Infrastructure
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is Ethanol fuel?
- Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme (EBP)
- Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India by 2025
- Advantages of Ethanol Blending
What is Ethanol fuel?
- Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol, the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, used as fuel.
- It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline.
- Ethanol is commonly made from biomass such as corn or sugarcane.
- Bioethanol is a form of renewable energy that can be produced from agricultural feedstocks.
- It can be made from very common crops such as hemp, sugarcane, potato, cassava and corn.
- There has been considerable debate about how useful bioethanol is in replacing gasoline.
- Concerns about its production and use relate to increased food prices due to the large amount of arable land required for crops, as well as the energy and pollution balance of the whole cycle of ethanol production, especially from corn.
Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme (EBP)
- Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme was launched in 2003- and this initiative is pursued aggressively in the last 4 to 5 years to reduce import dependence of crude oil as well as mitigate environmental pollution.
- The Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP) seeks to achieve blending of Ethanol with motor sprit with a view to reducing pollution, conserve foreign exchange and increase value addition in the sugar industry enabling them to clear cane price arrears of farmers.
- Although the Government of India decided to launch EBP programme in 2003 for supply of 5% ethanol blended Petrol, it later scaled up blending targets from 5% to 10% under the Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP).
- The Government of India has also advanced the target for 20% ethanol blending in petrol (also called E20) to 2025 from 2030.
- Currently, 8.5% of ethanol is blended with petrol in India.
Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India by 2025
- The central government has released an expert committee report on the Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India by 2025 that proposes a gradual rollout of ethanol-blended fuel to achieve E10 fuel supply by April 2022 and phased rollout of E20 from April 2023 to April 2025.
- The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoP&NG) had instituted an Expert Group to study the issues such as pricing of ethanol, matching pace of the automobile industry to manufacture vehicles with new engines with the supply of ethanol, pricing of such vehicles, fuel efficiency of different engines etc.
Advantages of Ethanol Blending
- Use of ethanol-blended petrol decreases emissions such as carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
- The unregulated carbonyl emissions, such as acetaldehyde emission were, however, higher with E10 and E20 compared to normal petrol. However, these emissions were relatively lower.
- Increased use of ethanol can help reduce the oil import bill. India’s net import cost stands at USD 551 billion in 2020-21. The E20 program can save the country USD 4 billion (Rs 30,000 crore) per annum.
- The oil companies procure ethanol from farmers that benefits the sugarcane farmers.
- Further, the government plans to encourage use of water-saving crops, such as maize, to produce ethanol, and production of ethanol from non-food feedstock.
Marsquake
Context:
Recently, NASA has reported that its InSight Mars lander detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet.
- The rover first landed on Mars in November 2018, and has since heard 1,313 quakes. The largest previously recorded “marsquake” was detected in August 2021.
Relevance:
GS III- Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- What are marsquakes, and why do they happen?
- About InSight
What are marsquakes, and why do they happen?
- On Earth, quakes are caused by shifts in tectonic plates.
- Mars, however, does not have tectonic plates, and its crust is a giant plate.
- Therefore, ‘marsquakes’ are caused due to stresses that cause rock fractures or faults in its crust.
About InSight:
- InSight is not looking for life on Mars, but is studying what Mars is made of, how its material is layered, and how much heat seeps out of it.
- This is important because Earth and Mars used to be similar — warm, wet and shrouded in thick atmospheres — before they took different paths 3-4 billion years ago.
- Mars stopped changing, while Earth continued to evolve.
- With InSight, scientists hope to compare Earth and Mars, and better understand how a planet’s starting materials make it more or less likely to support life.
- There are other missions to Mars that are looking for life on the planet, which makes Insight’s mandate unique.
- Some missions studying the possibility of life on Mars include UAE’s Hope, China’s Tianwen-1, and NASA’s Perseverance.
Martand Sun Temple
Context:
After Prayers held at the ruins of the eighth-century Martand Sun Temple in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag is deemed to be a violation of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) rules.
Relevance:
GS I- History, Facts for Prelims
About Martand Sun Temple
- The Martand Sun Temple is a Hindu temple in the Kashmir Valley, near the city of Anantnag.
- It was dedicated to Surya, the primary solar deity, and dated from the eighth century AD.
- Sikandar Shah Miri demolished the temple in an attempt to convert and execute Hindus throughout the valley.
- According to Kalhana, Lalitaditya Muktapida commissioned the Temple in the eighth century AD.
- The temple is situated on a plateau with a panoramic view of the Kashmir Valley.
- The visible architecture in the remains appears to be a mix of Gandharan, Gupta, and Chinese architectural styles.
