Current Affairs November 2021 UPSC IES IRMS

1. G-20 Summit adopts Rome Declaration

• During the summit, leaders elaborated deliberations on issues of global importance like fighting the covid-19 pandemic, improving health infrastructure, strengthening economic cooperation, and furthering innovation.

• They also adopted the ‘Rome Declaration’ and under the health, section the communique gives a very strong message. Countries agreed on the fact that Covid-19 immunization is a global public good.

• The Rome Declaration consists of 16 mutually agreed principles, which aim to guide joint action for preventing future health crises and to build a safer, equitable, and sustainable world.

2. UIDAI seeks exception from Data Bill

• The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has appealed from exemption from Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law, to avoid the duplicity of laws.

• UIDAI is already being governed by the Aadhaar Act.

• Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019:The bill was passed to provide protection to the personal data of individuals. It seeks to create a framework for processing personal data, by establishing a Data Protection Authority. And in 2021 non-personal data also included.

3. International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO)

• Launched at the G20 Summit, the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) is a data-driven, action-focused initiative by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) with support from the European Commission to catalyze the dramatic reduction of methane emissions, starting with the energy sector.

• IMEO is set to revolutionize the approach to methane reduction by interconnecting data with action on research, reporting, and regulation. IMEO will collect and integrate diverse methane emissions data streams to establish a global public record of empirically verified methane emissions at an unprecedented level of accuracy and granularity.

• By providing near-real-time, reliable, and granular data on the locations and quantity of methane emissions that target strategic mitigation action, IMEO will catalyze strategic mitigation actions that are urgently needed to achieve the Paris agreement goals.

• Methane Partnership 2.0: Methane Partnership 2.0 is a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) led climate initiative. It involves 62 companies, which represent 30% of the world’s oil and gas production.

• Global Methane Pledge: The Global Methane Pledge was launched at the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. As of now, more than 90 countries have signed this pledge.
• Global Methane Pledge is an effort led by the United States and the European Union, jointly.
• This pledge is significant because Methane is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas present in the atmosphere.

4. US joins International Solar Alliance as a member country

• Recently, the United States of America has become the 101st member country to join the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

• The ISA is an intergovernmental treaty-based organisation with a global mandate to catalyse solar growth by helping to reduce the cost of financing and technology.

• ISA is the nodal agency for implementing One Sun One World One Grid (OSOWOG), which seeks to transfer solar power generated in one region to feed the electricity demands of others.

• ISA is an Indian initiative that was launched by the Prime Minister of India and the President of France on 30th November 2015 in Paris, France on the side-lines of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP-21), with 121 solar resource-rich countries lying fully or partially between the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn as prospective members.

5. 3 farm laws repealed after 1 year of protest

• Recently, the Prime Minister announced the repeal of the three farm laws.

• The first and foremost demand of the protesting farmers’ organisations is the repeal of three new agricultural laws.

1. Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020: It is aimed at allowing trade in agricultural produce outside the existing APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) mandis.

2. Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020: It seeks to provide a framework for contract farming.
3. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020: It is aimed at removing commodities such as cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion and potato from the list of essential commodities.

• The second demand of farmers is the guarantee of Minimum Support Price (MSP) to ensure procurement of crops at a suitable price.

6. LIGO project in India

• Hingoli income division handed around 225 hectares of land right in Maharashtra to the authorities of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) venture.

• Central authorities had given an ‘in precept’ approval to LIGO-India mega science proposal in 2016, to analyse the gravitational waves.

• The LIGO India project was proposed with the aim of moving one advanced LIGO detector to India, from Hanford. This project is piloted by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).

• LIGO is a massive observatory to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to carry experiments. Its main objective is to make use of gravitational-wave observations in astronomical studies.

7. Swachh Survekshan 2021

• The President of India Ram Nath Kovind conferred awards to 342 cleanest cities of India at the ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’ as part of Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban 2.0 by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.

Under the Swachh Survekshan 2021, Indore has been awarded the ‘Cleanest City’ of India award for the 5th consecutive year in the ‘more than 1 lakh’ population category followed by Surat and Vijayawada on the 2nd and 3rd rank respectively.

• Vita, Lonavala, and Sasvad cities from Maharashtra have ranked first, second, and third Cleanest Cities respectively in the ‘less than 1 lakh’ population category.

• In other categories, Varanasi won the ‘Best Ganga Town’, Ahmedabad Cantonment won ‘India’s Cleanest Cantonment’ followed by Meerut Cantonment and Delhi Cantonment.

• Under the Swachh Survekshan 2021, Chhattisgarh has been awarded as the ‘Cleanest State’ of India for the 3rd consecutive year in the ‘more than 100 Urban Local Bodies’.

• Karnataka emerged as the ‘Fastest Mover State’ in the ‘more than 100 Urban Local Bodies’.

• Under the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities, 9 cities were certified as 5-star cities while 143 cities were certified as 3-star.

• The nine 5-star rated cities are Indore, Surat, New Delhi Municipal Council, Navi Mumbai, Ambikapur, Mysuru, Noida, Vijayawada, and Patan.

8. World’s 10 most polluted cities, 3 are from India

• According to the data from air quality and pollution city tracking service from IQAir, a Switzerland-based climate group, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai are among the top ten most polluted cities of the world.

• Here are the ten cities with the worst air quality indicators and pollution rankings, according to IQAir:

• Delhi, India (AQI: 556)
• Lahore, Pakistan (AQI: 354)
• Sofia, Bulgaria (AQI: 178)
• Kolkata, India (AQI: 177)
• Zagreb, Croatia (AQI: 173)
• Mumbai, India (AQI: 169)
• Belgrade, Serbia (AQI: 165)
• Chengdu, China (AQI: 165)
• Skopje, North Macedonia (AQI: 164)
• Krakow, Poland (AQI: 160)

• IQAir is also a technology partner of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).
• An AQI between zero and 50 is considered ‘good’, 51 and 100 ‘satisfactory’, 101 and 200 ‘moderate’, 201 and 300 ‘poor’, 301 and 400 ‘very poor’, then 401 and between 500 is considered ‘severe’.

safe harbour

• Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which have millions of users, argue that they cannot possibly be aware of every post, just as the managing director of Amazon does not always know all the items being sold on the online marketplace.

• Consider, a user’s tweets go viral and that results in death or violence. Now, under safe harbour protection, Twitter cannot be held liable just because of it. However, they will have to take down the content if they get a legal order from the court or authorities. This is what is termed safe harbour protection.

• The guidelines had asked all social media platforms to set up a grievances redressal and compliance mechanism.

• This included appointing a resident grievance officer, chief compliance officer and a nodal contact person.

• Under Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, The JPC has suggested that any social media that is not an intermediary be treated as a publisher. Under India’s Information Technology Act, an intermediary is a website or service that only receives, stores, and transmits information online, without any sort of selection or curation of the content. Such intermediaries enjoy “safe harbour” protection from being held liable for the content that they are hosting or transmitting. A publisher, however, is legally liable for the content that it is hosting.

Also Read:

1. Current Affairs January 2021
2. February Current Affairs 2021
3. March Current Affairs 2021
4. Current Affairs April 2021
5. Current Affairs May 2021
6. June Current Affairs 2021
7. July Current Affairs 2021
8. August Current Affairs 2021
9. Current Affairs September 2021