Daily Current Affairs 29 June 2020 | UPSC Current Affairs 2020

Current Affairs Of Today Are

1) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

• The draft environmental impact assessment (EIA) notification issued by the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in March dilutes the EIA process and encourages environment violations in case of big irrigation projects, alleged the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP). 
• The SANDRP is a network of researchers and experts working on water and environmental issues. Amruta Pradhan, a researcher with the SANDRP
• In the case of large­scale hydropower and irrigation projects, the SANDRP, through field studies, has routinely witnessed irregularities like poor quality of work, dishonest EIAs coupled with misinformation about the project, and inadequate or no impact assessment, to name just a few of the violations. The MoEF’s draft ensures no monitoring of these projects, let alone achieving compliance
• The most significant change in the amended draft has been in respect of category ‘B’ projects  (Hydroelectric projects lesser than 75 MW but higher than 25 MW fall in category ‘B1)
• While a significant slab of threshold limits is now pushed under category ‘B2’\ projects, these projects are completely exempted from the EIA and public consultation process. Further, these categories have been kept fluid
• This means that essentially, all the hydro­electric projects lesser than 25MW and irrigation projects that have a culturable command area between 2,000 and 10,000 hectares will not need an EIA or a public consultation for their appraisal
• The 2006 EIA notification, category ‘B’ project was treated as category ‘A’ project if the project fulfilled the ‘general conditions’, which meant if they were located (in whole or in part) within 10 km from the boundaries of protected areas, critically polluted areas, eco­sensitive zones, or inter­State and international boundaries
• But as per the new notification, ‘B1’ projects fulfilling the general condition will be appraised by the expert appraisal committee, but they will no more be treated as category ‘A’ projects. This explicit clarification does seem to imply that they will undergo a less rigorous appraisal
• With the removal of such conditions, projects could now be proposed in dangerously close proximities of the boundary of protected and eco­sensitive zones. The draft notification also stated that while projects concerning national defense and security or “involving other strategic considerations as determined by the Central government” would not be treated as category ‘A’, “no information relating to such projects shall be placed in public domain

Source: The Hindu

2) India's Crude Oil production is declining

• India's Crude Oil production is declining 2.1% annually OR you can also say that oil production is STAGNATING. And because of this our import of oil is increasing. 
• Out of our Total Consumption of Oil, 87.6% is imported and 12.4% is domestically produced.
• Domestic production is falling because:
• Our previous Oil Wells are aging faster as compared to new oil discoveries coming up
• In India, it takes a long time from allotment of oil wells to starting production and this is because of various clearances involved (we are improving in this but still it take more time as compared with other countries)
• Crude oil production in India is dominated by two PSUs viz. ONGC and Oil India. Few private players are also there in the upstream oil sector (upstream involves exploration and production of crude oil while downstream involves refining/processing, sales/marketing/ retailing) like Cairn India and Hindustan Oil exploration company. But they show a lack of interest because of the delay in getting approvals and clearances.
• When a company (govt/private)..........gets an oil block and extracts oil, then they need to pay some charges/taxes to the govt. for example, 
• ROYALTY to State Govt. (but if the oil block is in SEA, then royalty goes to Central Govt), 
• CESS is imposed for the environmental impact which goes to Centre; AND  
• PROFIT PETROLEUM goes to CENTRE (the company which gets the block during bidding need to share some portion of the profit to the govt, based on what they quoted during the selection process. this mechanism was there under the previous policy of NELP till 2016. But now, the bidding happens on REVENUE SHARING Model under the new HELP Policy)
• When OIL PRICES are high said $80/barrel to $100/barrel, then whatever share the company gets off the profit, they can pay Cess/Royalty and can get a decent return/profit. BUT when the oil prices are down said $40/barrel to $70/barrel then their earning is very less (Try to understand, if the price is high, both govt and the private company gets more money) and they find it difficult to pay Cess/Royalty and hence they are demanding for some relaxations on blocks allotted under previous policies. They are also asking that govt can offer some protection by guaranteeing a floor price for oil i.e. if oil falls below some level then govt should take the hit)
• Under the new HELP policy from 2016, there is a feature called Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP). Please try to understand this feature:
• EARLIER, govt used to decide which block it should offer for bidding and a lot of times, govt was slow in awarding blocks even if govt is sitting idle on huge oil reserves/blocks/wells. Put the private sector could not do anything except to wait.
• But now under the new feature of OALP, if a private/govt company thinks that there is a good/prolific OIL block where oil can be extracted then the company can ask the government to start auctioning off that specific block and govt will have to auction and any company can participate. This basically means govt cant sit idle on oil blocks.

Source: Indian Express

3) Gynandromorphism

• The Scarlet Skimmer  (Crocothemis servilia) had recorded ‘gynandromorphism’ — a very rare biological phenomenon
• Male dragonflies typically have a prominent blood­red coloration in almost all the body parts, including the head, thorax, abdomen, and legs, and the female is pale yellow in color with a dark brown thorax and legs
• The Kole Odonata Survey 2019, conducted by the Society for Odonate Studies and Kole Birders in association with Kerala Agricultural University and the Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department, was found them as “part red and part yellow" which is ‘gynandromorphism’ — a very rare biological phenomenon
• Their finding has been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Threatened Taxa under the title ‘A Record of gynandromorphism in the Libellulid Dragon fly Crocothemis Servilia from India’.

About 

• Gynandromorphs are chimeric individuals having both male and female tissues and it is viewed by the scientific community as a genetic aberration. Even though common in some arthropod taxa such as Crustacea and Arachnida, the paper says it is very rare in odonates and only 30 individuals from seven families have been reported with the condition worldwide.
• The spotted individual showed bilateral gynandromorphism of only the thorax, half of which showed blood-red coloration as in males and the other half pale yellow characteristic of females. The base of the wing of the red half was marked with rich amber, in contrast with the other wing base which was paler. The head, legs, and abdomen showed typical female morphology.
• It had mixtures of male and female external characters ranging from almost entirely female to about equally divided. They were symmetrical in development with normally dimorphic structures mostly having characters intermediate between the typical male and female conditions.

Source: The Hindu 

4) Research studies into Indian Ocean climate patterns.

• About 19,000-21,000 years ago, ice-sheets covered North America and Eurasia, and sea-levels were much lower. This period, the peak of ice age conditions, is called the Last Glacial Maximum.
• The research argues that there was the existence of an ‘Indian Ocean El Niño’ during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Research methodology:

• The research involved the study of microscopic zooplankton called foraminifera.
• Foraminifera builds a calcium carbonate shell, and studying these can reveal the properties of the water. The team measured multiple individual shells of foraminifera from ocean sediment cores and reconstructed the sea surface temperature conditions of the past.

Details:

• Researchers analyzed simulations of the past climate and have predicted that the ongoing climate change could reawaken an ancient climate pattern of the Indian Ocean.
• The researchers have pointed out that the possible climatic pattern could be similar to the El Niño phenomenon of the Pacific Ocean bringing more frequent and devastating floods and drought to several densely-populated countries around the Indian Ocean region.

Concerns:

• Swings in Monsoon rainfall:
• If the hypothesized ‘Indian Ocean El Niño’ emerges shortly, it will pose a source of uncertainty in rainfall prediction and will likely amplify swings in monsoon rainfall. It could bring more frequent droughts to East Africa and southern India and increased rainfall over Indonesia.
• Changes in the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation strongly affect Indian Monsoon variability from year to year.
• The threat of global warming:
• If current global warming trends continue, the predicted new Indian Ocean El Niño could emerge as early as 2050.

Source: The Hindu

5) India- Sri Lanka relations

• Sri Lanka has been witnessing an economic crisis.
• Sri Lanka’s foreign reserve which was already in peril due to economic troubles and 2019’s Easter Sunday terror attacks are being further drained after the pandemic.
• The critical aspects of the Sri Lankan economy involving exports (tea and garments), labor remittances, and tourism sectors have been badly hit.
• Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt is approximately $55 billion, which accounts for nearly 80% of its GDP. Sri Lanka is scheduled to repay $2.9 billion of its total external debt in 2020. Sri Lanka has an outstanding payment of about $960 million to India.
• Per reports, Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has put on hold funding for a proposed light rail transit system, because of concerns over Sri Lanka’s rising debt.

Debt moratorium requests:

• Sri Lanka has renewed calls for international monetary organizations to provide debt relief for developing countries and has also made an appeal to all its debt partners, including India.
• Sri Lanka has requested India for a debt moratorium and has also made two separate requests for a currency swap facility.
• The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has also sought a $400 million currency swap with the RBI under the SAARC facility and another request was made from the visiting Sri Lankan President seeking a “special” $1.1 billion currency swap facility from India.

Details:

• Sri Lanka’s request to India for a postponement of its debt repayment has been under consideration and no decision has been taken even after more than four months have passed since the formal request was made.

Concerns:

• The China factor:
• The Sri Lankan government is likely to turn to China for help with debt repayment, as it did in 2014, even as its request to India for a postponement of its debt repayment has been pending.
• China has already approved an additional $500 million loan to Sri Lanka from its development bank to help counter the impact of the pandemic.
• This could further strengthen China’s sway over Sri Lanka at the cost of India-Sri Lanka relations.
• China’s debt-trap diplomacy:
• Many countries in the South Asian region are also seeking debt repayments.
• Recently, Pakistan Prime Minister has proposed a ‘Global Initiative on Debt Relief” to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic.
• The Maldives is talking to all its bilateral partners including India and international agencies for debt relief.
• China has a substantial share of the debt owed by Sri Lanka and also other countries in South Asia like the Maldives and Pakistan.
• The economic diplomacy of the Chinese has often been criticized for its “debt trap” tactics. The continued reliance of the nations on Chinese investments could further tighten Chinese sway on these nations.

Source: The Hindu

6) The online summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

• China has been pushing its presence in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries while claimant countries have been preoccupied with tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
• China has been stepping up its activity in the disputed South China Sea during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Vietnam and the Philippines had raised protests with China in April 2020 after China unilaterally declared the creation of new administrative districts on islands in the South China Sea to which Vietnam and the Philippines also have competing claims.
• In early April 2020, Vietnam claimed that one of its fishing boats was sunk by a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel.

Details:

• Leaders of Vietnam and the Philippines argued that international institutions and international law had been seriously challenged during the global crisis.
• Vietnam and the Philippines have warned of growing insecurity and instability in Southeast Asia and have called upon countries to refrain from escalating tensions and abide by responsibilities under international law.
• Southeast Asian leaders have called for the 1982 UN oceans treaty to be the basis for determining maritime entitlements and sovereign rights in the South China Sea.
• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is a 1982 international agreement that defines the rights of nations to the world’s oceans.
• The statement calls for adherence to the rule of law in a disputed region that has long been regarded as an Asian flashpoint.
• This marks one of the strongest remarks of the member nations, opposing China’s claim to the entire disputed South China Sea waters based on historical grounds. While it has criticized aggressive behavior in the disputed waters, ASEAN has not named China in its post-summit communique.

Source: The Hindu

7) On the warpath against terror financing

Mandate and functioning of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Background:

• The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was established in 1989 after a decision by members of the G-7 and the European Commission. It functions out of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris.
• The 9/11 terror attacks pointed out that if the world were to actually fight global terror, it would need to not only follow the money trail for terror financing but also hold countries that allowed terrorists safe haven and financial assistance to accounting.
• In October 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S., the FATF which was up till then working on money laundering and white-collar crimes, met in Washington DC to discuss a radical shift in its goals.
• The FATF plenary then adopted an eight-point amendment to its charter that added Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) to its tasks on Anti-Money Laundering (AML/CFT).

Details:

The functioning of the FATF:

• FATF has 39 member-countries that regularly review the conduct of nations in stopping terror-related transactions worldwide.
• FATF is not an enforcement agency itself, but a task force composed of 39 member governments who fund the FATF and agree on its mandate. This means that FATF depends on the voluntary implementation of its reports by member countries. The FATF follows a principle of ostracism against members who don’t comply with its strictures along with collaboration with the global banking system.
• Decisions are made by the grouping on a consensus basis, as they conduct reviews of countries on AML/CFT parameters (called “Mutual evaluations”), and then either clear them, or use a “color-coded” reference for them, placing countries in the “increased monitoring” category or the “grey list”, or the “high-risk jurisdictions” or “call for action” category, as the “blacklist” is formally known.
• At present, only Iran and North Korea are on the blacklist, while 18 countries, including Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iceland, Jamaica, and Mauritius, are on the grey list.
• The decisions are taken by consensus in the 39-member group, which has helped ensure that the FATF doesn’t at present suffer from the polarisation that has virtually paralyzed the UNSC. The FATF runs differently from other multilateral agencies, as its primary focus is on reviewing all actions based on technical guidelines and there is very little scope for geopolitics.

India’s stakes:

• India became an observer in the grouping in 2006 and was inducted as a full member in 2010.
• India’s long and sometimes lone battle over the past few decades in holding Pakistan to account for cross-border terror activities, including in Jammu and Kashmir, the IC-814 hijacking, 2008 Mumbai attacks, the Pathankot airbase attack in 2015, Uri Army base in 2016 and many others have had limited effect.
• While Pakistan has clearly disregarded warnings from India, the U.S., and other countries to crack down on several cross-border terror groups that exist on its soil, it remains eager to avoid the FATF strictures.
• Pakistan has been kept on the group’s radar since 2008 and is currently on the grey list. It has to prove that it is making progress on the FATF’s report, that gave it a grueling 27-point action plan to fulfill, or face a blacklisting, which means severe financial restrictions, a downgrading by credit agencies, and most significantly, possible loan cuts by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• Pakistan has taken a few measures owing to pressure by the FATF. It has changed terror laws to include all UN Security Council-designated individuals and organizations, shown progress in the prosecution of leaders of LeT and JeM including the re-arrest of the Mumbai attack’s mastermind Hafiz Saeed, and has tightened all banking mechanisms to show that it has frozen funding to the terror groups.

Conclusion:

• FATF will have to respond to new-age challenges to the global counter-terror and anti-money laundering regime: including bitcoins and cyber currencies, illegal trafficking of wildlife as a source of funding, use of artificial intelligence in terror attacks and biowarfare as part of the wider challenge of the coronavirus pandemic.

Source: The Hindu

8)  Novel coronavirus infection might trigger type-1 diabetes

Risk of diabetes in COVID infected patients.

Details:

• There seems to be a bidirectional relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes.
• Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of severe COVID-19.
• Diabetes poses one of the key risk factors for developing severe COVID-19, and chances of dying are elevated in people with diabetes.
• New-onset diabetes and severe metabolic complications of pre-existing diabetes have been observed in patients with COVID-19.
• There is growing evidence that novel coronavirus might actually be triggering diabetes in some people who have so far remained free of it. These patients typically develop type-1 diabetes.

Causative factors:

• Patients are found to develop type-1 diabetes, which is caused when the body’s immune system plays rogue and begins to attack and destroy the beta cells which produce the hormone insulin in the pancreas. With the destruction of beta cells, the amount of insulin produced is reduced, and hence, the ability of the body to control blood sugar is compromised leading to type-1 diabetes.
• The 2002 SARS coronavirus, too, caused acute-onset diabetes in patients. Like the 2002 SARS coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, too, binds to ACE2 receptors that are found on many organs involved in controlling blood sugar, including the liver and pancreatic beta cells, and subsequently infects the cells in the organs.
• ACE2 is expressed in human adult alpha and beta cells. While the beta cells produce insulin which reduces the sugar level in the blood, the alpha cells produce glucagon, which increases the blood sugar. A fine balance between the two helps maintain the blood sugar level.

Source: The Hindu

9) Farm reforms in States

Finance Commission panel on agricultural sector reforms agenda.

Background:

• Interim report of the Finance Commission:
• In the framework for the Finance Commission’s interim report for 2020-21, the commission had recommended performance incentives to be given to States based on three measurable indicators of agricultural reforms.
• If State Legislatures enacted the Centre’s Model Acts on agricultural marketing and contract farming, as well as the Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act, 2016, prepared by NITI Aayog, they would be eligible for financial incentives from the Commission from 2021-22.
• Atmanirbhar Bharat package
• The Central government has issued ordinances on agricultural marketing reforms and contract farming as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat package.

Details:

• In the light of the government efforts of reforms in the agricultural sector, the 15th Finance Commission is considering the promotion of an expanded farm reform agenda for States over the next five years.
• The Finance Commission has set up a panel to devise a mechanism for incentivization of States in areas of agricultural reform agenda for the purpose of inclusion in the Commission’s recommendations in its final report.
• The panel will consider new agricultural reform measures to promote among States, possibly including the Model Land Leasing Act.

Source: The Hindu

10) Statistics Day

• The Government has been celebrating the Statistics Day, to popularise the use of Statistics in everyday life and sensitize the public as to how Statistics helps in shaping and framing policies. It has been designated as one of the Special Days to be celebrated at the national level and is celebrated on the birth anniversary of Prof. P C Mahalanobis, on 29thJune, in recognition of his invaluable contribution to establishing the National Statistical System.
• This year it has been decided to celebrate the Statistics Day, 2020 virtually, given the travel and safety advisories on account of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be chaired by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation and Ministry of Planning, Rao Inderjit Singh.
• Every year, Statistics Day is celebrated with a theme of current national importance, which runs for a year by way of several workshops and seminars, aimed at bringing about improvements in the selected area. The theme of Statistics Day, 2019 was “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” and carrying this forward the theme of Statistics Day, 2020 is selected as SDG- 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages) & SDG- 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls). 
• The updated version of the Report on Sustainable Development Goals-National Indicator Framework (NIF) Progress Report 2020 (version 2.1)will be released during the event. Along with the report, the Indian Statistical Services Cadre Management Portal will also be launched on 29thJune 2020.

Source: PIB