Daily Current Affairs : 20th May

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Environment cost of digital planet
2. Hornbill
3. Supercapacitor
4. Risk companies face from climate change
5. Data Localisation
6. Exit Polls
7. RISAT 2B
8. Appellate body of WTO

1 . Environment Cost of Digital Planet

Context : Technology is often touted as a solution to the world’s environmental challenges, but it is also part of the problem: industry executives are facing rising pressure to clean up their energy and resource-intensive business.

Key Findings

• It take around 25 watts per hour, representing 20 grammes of carbon dioxide emissions, to send a one-megabyte email but the Radicati research group expects 293 billion emails will be sent every single day this year and the power needs to be generated — mostly from fossil fuels.
• Apps can quickly drain and shorten the life of phone batteries
• Server farms crunching mammoth amounts of data worldwide, which require huge amounts of electricity both to run and to power airconditioning which keeps the equipment from getting too hot
• Under the current global energy mix, the share of greenhouse gas emissions from information and communication technologies will rise from 2.5% in 2013 to 4% in 2020,
  That makes the sector more carbon-intensive than civil aviation (a 2% share of emissions in 2018) and on track to reach automobiles (8%)

2 . Hornbill

Context : Hiding under trees for hours, counting fruits and visitor birds and by studying their feeding behaviours, researchers from Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, have mapped the different frugivore (fruit eater) birds and their interactions that are important for the forest ecosystem.

About Hornbill

• Hornbill is the state bird of Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh
• They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly colored and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible
• They are the only birds in which the first and second neck vertebrate are fused together
• They are mainly frugivorous, but they also feed on small animals

Threats

• Tribesmen in parts of northeastern India and Borneo use the feathers for head-dresses, and the skulls are often worn as decorations
• They are hunted for meat
• Forest clearance for agriculture

About the News

• Birds are exceptionally good seed dispersers: they lack teeth and tend to swallow food whole, and they often move long distances between the areas where they feed and the areas where they rest/defecate. 
• The study carried out in Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh noted that hornbills, one among the large-sized frugivores, are the top seed dispersers. 
• For many reasons, it is generally advantageous for seeds to be removed from the immediate vicinity of the parent plant prior to germination.  
• Seeds that fall under the parent tree face heavy competition, predation by rodents and insects and fungal infections. So their chances of survival are very low.
• Plants depend on frugivore birds to disperse the seeds at favourable sites, which have low competition and predation pressures, to expand their geographic range.
• So the decline of frugivores could severely affect the ecosystem

About Pakke Tiger Reserve

• Pakke Tiger Reserve, also known as Pakhui Tiger Reserve, is a Project Tiger reserve in the East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India.
• The reserve is protected by the Department of Environment and Forest of Arunachal Pradesh.
• Pakke Tiger Reserve has won India Biodiversity Award 2016 in the category of ‘Conservation of threatened species’ for its Hornbill Nest Adoption Programme
• At least 40 mammal species occur in Pakhui Tiger Reserve (PTR). Three large cats – the Bengal tiger, Indian leopard and clouded leopard share space with two canids – the wild dog and Asiatic jackal. Among the herbivore species, elephant, barking deer, gaur, and sambar are most commonly encountered.
• he commonest monkeys are the Rhesus macaque, Assamese macaque and the capped langur.
• It is also home to as many as sixteen species of viverrids, weasels and mongooses

3 . Wearable Supercapacitor

Context : Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay have fabricated a wearable supercapacitor that can store and deliver large amount of electrical energy, exceeding other similar devices

What is Capacitor and Supercapacitor

• The capacitor is a component which has the ability or “capacity” to store energy in the form of an electrical charge producing a potential difference (Static Voltage) across its plates, much like a small rechargeable battery.
• A supercapacitor differs from the ordinary capacitor in that it has much higher capacity and energy density, while at the same time having a higher power density. These characteristics make it a convenient power source for devices that require high power and durability of the power unit.

Details about Wearable Supercapacitor

• The wearable energy storage device can be stitched on to any fabric and can deliver power ranging from microwatt to milliwatt. The energy stored in the device can power GPS location-based transmitters or a 1.8 volt LED.
• Supercapacitor is integrated with a piezoelectric energy generator which will make it completely self-sustaining and when stitched to the fabric, the supercapacitor can be used for powering GPS location-based devices or a LED lamp or even charge small electronic devices,
• The electrode of the supercapacitor was fabricated by uniformly coating cotton yarn with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The coating is done by dipping the yarn into carbon nanotube ink, where the CNTs are dispersed in water using a surfactant (detergent).
• The coating converts the electrical insulating yarn into a metallic conductor thereby behaving like an electrode. “The yarns coated with carbon nanotubes exhibited a finite electrical conductivity,”
• As the supercapacitor is targeting wearable and portable electronics hence researchers prepared a solid electrolyte film just 150 micrometre thick by mixing poly vinyl alcohol and potassium hydroxide in appropriate proportionsand stitched the solid electrolyte with CNT-coated yarn both vertically and horizontally. Capacitors were formed wherever the CNT wires criss-crossed each other and sandwiched the electrolyte
• By increasing the number of stitches, and therefore, the number of capacitors, the amount of energy stored can be increased

4 . Risk companies face from climate change

Context : Institutional investors from 11 countries convened by the UN Environment Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) made public a report that helps investors understand how to calculate the risk companies face from climate change. There are key factors that have necessitated this new protocol, which is more like an investor guide

Background

• This guide was made in line with recommendations by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), a board formed as a result of an agreement at a G20 summit in London, 2009.
• This board consisted of representatives from large banks, insurance companies, asset managers, pension funds, large non-financial companies, accounting and consulting firms, and credit rating agencies.
• The TCFD in 2017 developed voluntary, consistent climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies in providing information to stakeholders. To do that they considered the physical, liability and transition risks associated with climate change and what constitutes effective financial disclosures across industries.

Findings of the Report

• Investors face as much as 13.16% of risk from the required transition to a low-carbon economy
• Utilities, transportation, agriculture as well as mining and petroleum refining sectors are at high levels of policy risk. On the bright side, there were profits to be made too and the report said that there was potentially $2.1 trillion as ‘green profits’ for the taking.
• However, green revenues generated from the sale of low carbon technologies, which support the transition, will help companies offset costs from complying with greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies.
• If governments delay action to enact climate policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the 30,000 companies in the universe faced a further cost of $1.2 trillion compared to a scenario where climate policy is enacted smoothly and steadily with immediate effect, the report added.

Why is the report significant?

• Climate change is already impacting economies around the world and this will continue to intensify. Extreme weather events, including floods, tropical cyclones, and extreme hot and cold days are already physically impacting business operations.
• Several reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn of myriad risk to economies but so far there’s been no specific assessment of how companies can account for such risks.
• Policy and technology shifts mean that emission-intensive companies — thermal power and mining, for instance — would become less competitive.
• These changes pose potentially unprecedented risks — and opportunities — to institutional investors and other financial institutions which are exposed to such businesses.

5 . Data Localisation

Context: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently expressed apprehension about nations wanting to store data locally. According to him, it gave rise to possibilities where authoritarian governments would have access to data for possible misuse. U.S. also has criticised India’s proposed norms on data localisation as ‘most discriminatory’ and ‘trade-distortive’.

What is data localisation?

• Data localisation laws refer to regulations that dictate how data on a nation’s citizens is collected, processed and stored inside the country.

Arguments in support of Data Localisation

• Data localisation is critical for law enforcement : Access to data by Indian law agencies, in case of a breach or threat, cannot be dependent on the whims and fancies, nor on lengthy legal processes of another nation that hosts data generated in India.
• If data generated in India is stored in the U.S., for example, it is dependent on technology and channels such as the undersea fibre optic cable network. Such reliance can be debilitating in the case of a tech or physical breakdown.
• Technology playfields are not even : A developing country such as India may be playing catch-up with a developed nation, which may be willing to offer liberal laws. It may not be wise for India to have the liberal rules as other nations would. It is ideal to have the data stored only locally, without even having a copy abroad, in order to protect Indian data from foreign surveillance.

Arguments against Data Localisation

• The disadvantage for a company compelled to localise data is — costs, in the form of servers, the UPS, generators, cooling costs, building and personnel.
• Small companies providing services in India will find compliance tough : One of the objectives of data localisation is to give a fillip to the start-up sector in India, but stringent norms can make it costly for small firms to comply thereby defeating this objective.

Does India have rules in place for data protection?

• Currently, the only mandatory rule on data localisation in India is by the Reserve Bank of India for payment systems. Other than this, there are only reports or drafts of bills that are yet to be signed into law.
• Among material available in the public domain on data localisation is the white paper that preceded the Jusitce Srikrishna Committee report, inviting public comments.
• The second piece is the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 itself which has specific requirements on cross-border data transfers. This is seen as being more restrictive than the recommendations of the Srikrishna Committee.
• The draft e-commerce policy also has clauses on cross-border data transfer. For example, it suggests that if a global entity’s India subsidiary transfers Indian users’ data to its parent, the same cannot be transferred to a third party even with the user’s consent.

International Examples

• Canada and Australia protect their health data very carefully.
• Vietnam mandates one copy of data to be stored locally and for any company that collects user data to have a local office, unlike the EU’s GDPR;
• China mandates strict data localisation in servers within its borders.
• For the EU, it is clear that customer is ‘king’. Their GDPR is agnostic to technology and sector.
• U.S. has no single data protection law at the Federal level. It does, however, have individual laws such as the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) for health care, another for payments
• Brazil, Japan, Korea and New Zealand have put in place data protection laws.
• Chile has recently announced the setting up of an independent data protection authority, while Argentina is currently reforming its privacy legislation.

6 . Exit Polls

Context : Exit Polls predict second term for Modi

About Exit Polls

• Exit polls are conducted by researchers asking voters how they have voted just after they have left the polling station after casting their ballot
• Such polls are aimed at predicting result of an election based on the info collected from voters on election day
• Section 126 A of the RPA 1951 bans exit polls from the beginning of the polls until half an hour after the final phase of voting has been held

How it is different from Opinion Poll

• An opinion poll is a voter behaviour survey conducted in order to find out the opinion of the people, including those who may or may not vote, before voting takes place
• An exit poll is done after people have voted on an election day

7 . RISAT 2B

Context : Radar Imaging Satellite(RISAT)-2B, the satellite due to be launched before dawn on May 22 from Sriharikota, will mark the resumption of a vital ring of Indian all-seeing radar imaging satellites after seven years.

About RISAT 2B

• RISAT 2B, RISAT 2BR1 and RISAT 2BR2 (Radar Imaging Satellite) are satellite imaging missions of ISRO using an active SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imager to provide continuity of service for RISAT-2.

Importance of RISAT

• When it is cloudy or dark, ‘regular’ remote-sensing or optical imaging satellites — which work like a light-dependent camera — cannot perceive hidden or surreptitious objects on the ground.
• Satellites that are equipped with an active sensor, the synthetic aperture radar (SAR), can sense or ‘observe’ Earth in a special way from space day and night, rain or cloud.
• This all-weather seeing feature is what makes them special for security forces and disaster relief agencies.
• In India it is also used as radar imaging for crop estimation because our main crop growing season of kharif is in May-September when it rains and gets cloudy.
• The data is also extensively used for forestry, soil, land use, geology and during floods and cyclone.”

8 . Appellate body of WTO

Context : The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) dispute settlement mechanism is going through a “crisis”: the body is struggling to appoint new members to its understaffed Appellate Body that hears appeals in trade. Unless the issue is resolved, the body could become defunct, and countries locked in international trade disputes will be left with no forum for recourse.

What is the WTO’s Appellate Body, and why is it important?

• The Appellate Body, set up in 1995, is a standing committee of seven members that presides over appeals against judgments passed in trade-related disputes brought by WTO members.
• Countries involved in a dispute over measures purported to break a WTO agreement or obligation can approach the Appellate Body if they feel the report of the panel set up to examine the issue needs to be reviewed on points of law. Existing evidence is not re-examined; legal interpretations are reviewed.
• The Appellate Body can uphold, modify, or reverse the legal findings of the panel that heard the dispute. Countries on either or both sides of the dispute can appeal.
• The WTO’s dispute settlement procedure is seen as being vital to ensuring smooth international trade flows. The Appellate Body has so far issued 152 reports. The reports, once adopted by the WTO’s disputes settlement body, are final and binding on the parties.

What is the problem in the WTO Appellate Body?

• Over the last two years, the membership of the body has dwindled to just three persons instead of the required seven.
• This is because the United States, which believes the WTO is biased against it, has been blocking appointments of new members and reappointments of some members who have completed their four-year tenures. Two members will complete their tenures in December this year, leaving the body with just one member.
• At least three people are required to preside over an appeal, and if new members are not appointed to replace the two retiring ones, the body will cease to be relevant.
• The understaffed appeals body has been unable to stick to its 2-3 month deadline for appeals filed in the last few years, and the backlog of cases has prevented it from initiating proceedings in appeals that have been filed in the last year. The three members have been proceeding on all appeals filed since October 1, 2018.
• In February 2019, the body said it would be unable to staff an appeal in a dispute between Japan and India over certain safeguard measures that India had imposed on imports of iron and steel products. The panel had found that India had acted “inconsistently” with some WTO agreements, and India had notified the Dispute Settlement Body of its decision to appeal certain issues of law and legal interpretations in December 2018.
• The body has so far been unable to review at least 10 appeals that have been filed since July 2018.

Way Forward

• While new appointments to the Appellate Body are usually made by a consensus of WTO members, there is a provision for voting where a consensus is not possible.
• The group of 17 least developed and developing countries, including India, that have committed to working together to end the impasse at the Appellate Body can submit or support a proposal to this effect, and try to get new members on the Appellate Body by a majority vote.
• This, however, may be an option of the last resort, as all countries fear unilateral measures by the US as a consequence of directly opposing its veto.