Read the passage and answer the questions:
Environment and natural resources
According to the Human Development Report 2016 of the United Nations Development Programme, 663 million people in developing countries have no access to safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, resulting in the death of more than three million children every year. The Club of Rome, a global think tank, published a book in 1972 entitled ‘Limits to Growth’, dramatising the potential depletion of the Earth’s resources against the backdrop of rapidly growing world population. The growing focus on environmental issues within the arena of global politics was firmly consolidated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. This was also called the Earth Summit. ‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community. Cooperation over the global commons is not easy. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol. To address environmental issues, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides that the parties should act to protect the climate system “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”
According to the UNFCCC, what is the basis for the parties to act and protect the climate system?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities
The passage quotes the UNFCCC: the parties should act to protect the climate system “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” The other options change the words of this phrase.
Note: This passage is put together from lines of the NCERT chapter ‘Environment and Natural Resources’, almost word for word, from four different pages. Lines from different sections of a chapter can be joined into one case study, so leave no page of the chapter unread.
NCERT (2025-26): “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities … The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also provides that the parties should act to protect the climate system ‘on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.’ The parties to the Convention agreed that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries.…” |