Directions for the following 6 (six) items: Read the following two passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only. Passage - 1 Climate change poses potentially devastating effects of India's agriculture. While the overall parameters of climate change are increasingly accepted – a 10C average temperature increase over the next 30 years, sea level rise of less than 10 cm in the same period, and regional monsoon variations and corresponding droughts – the impacts in India are likely to be quite site and crop specific. Some crops may respond favourable to the changing conditions, others may not. This emphasizes the need to promote agricultural research and create maximum flexibility in the system to permit adaptations. The key ingredient for “drought proofing” is the managed recharge of aquifers. To ensure continued yield of important staple crops (e.g. wheat), it may also be necessary to shift the locations where these crops are grown, in response to temperature changes as well as to water availability. The latter will be key factor in making long terms investment decisions. For example, water runoff from the Himalayas is predicted to increase over the next 30 years as glaciers melt, but then decline substantially thereafter. It will be critical to provide incentives to plan for these large-scale shifts in agro-ecological conditions. India needs to make long term investment in research and development in agriculture. India is likely to experience changed weather patterns in future.
1. Melting of glaciers.
2. Water availability and temperature suitability at other locations.
3. Poor productivity of crops.
4. Wider adaptability of crop plants.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
Passage – 2 It is essential that we mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change that would take place in coming years and decades. Mitigation would require a major shift in the way we produce and consume energy. A shift away from overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels is now ,long overdue, but unfortunately, technological development has been slow and inadequate largely because government policies have not promoted investments in research and development, myopically as a result of relatively low prices of oil. It is now,therefore, imperative for a country like India treating the opportunity of harnessing renewable energy on a large scale as a national imperative. This country is extremely well endowed with solar, wind and biomass sourcesof energy. Where we have lagged, unfortunately, is in our ability to develop and to create technological solutions for harnessing these resources. One particular trajectory for carrying out stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows the need for ensuring that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than 2015 and reduce rapidly thereafter. The cost associated with such a trajectory is truly modest and would amount, in the estimation of IPCC, to not more than 3 percent of the global GDP in 2030. In other words, the level of prosperity that the world would have reached without mitigation would at worst be postponed by a few months or a year at the most. This is clearly not a very high price to pay for protecting hundreds of millions of people from the worst risks associated with climate change. Any such effort, however, would require lifestyles to change appropriately also. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not a mere technological fix, and clearly requires changes in lifestyles and transformation of a country’s economic structure, whereby effective reduction in emissions is brought about, such as through the consumption of much lower quantities of animal protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has determined that the emissions from the livestock sector amount to 18 percent of the total. The reduction of emissions from this source is entirely in the hands of human beings, who have never questioned the impacts that their dietary habits of consuming more and more animal protein are bringing about. Mitigation overall has huge co-benefits, such as lower air pollution and health benefits, higher energy security and greater employment.
1. Reducing the consumption of meat
2. Rapid economic liberalization
3. Reducing the consumerism
4. Modern management practices of livestock.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
1. Inadequate technological development.
2. Inadequate funds for research and development.
3. Inadequate availability of alternative sources of energy.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
1. Reduces expenditure on public health
2. Reduces dependence on livestock
3. Reduces energy requirements
4. Reduces rate of global climate change
Select the correct answer using the code given below: