Environment – Medium Level – GK Questions

Eco-anxiety, recognized by mental health professionals, reflects distress about climate change impacts on future generations, requiring supportive coping strategies and meaningful action.

Coined by Mark Carney, this concept highlights how short-term political and business cycles conflict with the long-term nature of climate risks, hindering preventive action.

This theory posits that altruistic and biospheric values, combined with awareness of environmental threats and personal responsibility, activate pro-environmental norms and behavior.

Behavioral economics identifies cognitive biases like present bias, status quo bias, and lack of immediate feedback as obstacles to adopting sustainable behaviors.

Greenwashing deceives consumers by overstating environmental credentials, undermining genuine sustainability efforts and eroding trust in green claims.

Accumulated space junk poses collision risks that could trigger cascading debris generation, threatening space infrastructure and future space activities.

Arctic Amplification occurs due to feedbacks like sea ice loss reducing albedo, leading to accelerated warming with global implications for weather patterns and sea level rise.

Excessive artificial light at night interferes with natural light-dark cycles, affecting animal navigation, reproduction, and plant phenology, while also impacting human health.

The Planetary Boundaries framework identifies critical Earth system processes like climate change, biodiversity integrity, nitrogen/phosphorus cycles, and land-use change that must remain within safe limits.

Environmental contamination with antibiotics selects for resistant bacteria, which can transfer resistance genes to pathogens, posing a global public health threat.

Microplastics from degraded plastics, microbeads, and fibers accumulate in ecosystems, are ingested by organisms, and pose risks to wildlife and human health.

These stationary lift nets, introduced centuries ago, allow selective fishing with minimal bycatch and are an example of traditional sustainable fishing technology.

Farmers traditionally use neem, turmeric, and other botanicals as natural pesticides for stored grains, reducing chemical use and preserving seed viability.

The Phad system in north Maharashtra diverts river water through canals to irrigate fields in a rotational manner, managed by local water user groups.

Kuhls are gravity-fed channels that divert water from rivers to fields, managed collectively by villages, representing sustainable traditional water governance.

Sacred groves, called Kavu in Kerala, Devrai in Maharashtra, and Sarna in Jharkhand, serve as biodiversity refuges and preserve traditional conservation ethics.

The Apatani wet rice cultivation system, recognized by FAO as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS), sustainably integrates fish farming with paddy fields.

The Supreme Court restricted mining in the ecologically sensitive Aravalli hills of Haryana and Rajasthan to prevent deforestation, soil erosion, and water depletion.

This case addressed groundwater contamination by chemical units in Bichhri, Rajasthan, and reinforced the Polluter Pays Principle for remediation costs.

The Supreme Court restricted intensive shrimp farming in coastal ecologically sensitive areas, emphasizing the need to balance economic activities with environmental protection.