PIB Analysis Date : 7/12/2018

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PIB ANALYSIS FOR UPSC CIVIL SERVICES EXAM

Topics Covered

  1. Food and Agriculture Organization 
  2. Skoch Award
  3. AI 4 All Global Hackathon

1 . Food and Agriculture Organization 

Food and Agriculture organisation (FAO) Council approves India’s proposal to observe an International Year of Millets in 2023
FAO Council also approves India’s membership to the Executive Board of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) for 2020 and 2021

About the Release

  • 160th session of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Council, currently underway in Rome, approved India’s proposal to observe an International Year of Millets in 2023
  • FAO Council also approved India’s membership to the Executive Board of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) for 2020 and 2021

About FAO

  • The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. 
  • Our goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With over 194 member states, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide. We believe that everyone can play a part in ending hunger. 
  • In the year 1945 in the first session of the newly created United Nations establishes the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a specialized UN agency.
  • Washington D.C. is designated as a temporary FAO headquarters and it was later moved to Rome

What they do

  • Help eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition
  • Make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable
  • Reduce rural poverty
  • Enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems
  • Increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises

FAO and India

  • India is a founder member of FAO 
  • Priority Areas
  1. Sustainable and improved agricultural productivity and increased farm incomes
  2. Stronger food and nutrition security systems
  3. Effective natural resource management, community development and assistance in transboundary cooperationto global public good
  4. Enhanced social inclusion, improved skills and employment opportunity in the agriculture sector

About World Food Programme

  • The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations and the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security.
  • According to the WFP, it provides food assistance to an average of 91.4 million people in 83 countries each year. From its headquarters in Rome and from more than 80 country offices around the world, the WFP works to help people who cannot produce or obtain enough food for themselves and their families.
  • It is a member of the United Nations Development Group and part of its executive committee
  • WFP is governed by an executive board which consists of representatives from 36 member states

Objectives

  1. “Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies”
  2. “Support food security and nutrition and (re)build livelihoods in fragile settings and following emergencies”
  3. “Reduce risk and enable people, communities and countries to meet their own food and nutrition needs”
  4. “Reduce undernutrition and break the intergenerational cycle of hunger”
  5. “Zero Hunger in 2030”

2 . Skoch Award

About the Release 

  • Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India has been conferred the Skoch Award for National Significance 
  • The award has been conferred on the Ministry considering its purpose and critical role played in installing about 73 GW renewable energy capacity in the country. With 21 per cent of total installed capacity, within the year renewable energy grossed a magic figure of providing one billion units of electricity in the country.
  • Today, India ranks 4 in the world in wind energy capacity and 5th in solar & total renewable energy capacity installed in the world. India has played a critical role in setting up of international solar alliance. Further, India moved a resolution during the first meeting for making it a global initiative.
  • Skoch Group is a think tank dealing with socio-economic issues with a focus on inclusive growth. According to their website they have instituted India’s highest independent civilian honours in the field of governance, finance, technology, economics and social sector. 

3 . AI 4 All Global Hackathon

NITI Aayog Launches Global Hackathon On Artificial Intelligence

  • NITI Aayog organises hackathons to source sustainable, innovative and technologically-enabled solutions to address various challenges in the development space
  • NITI Aayog is partnering with Perlin – a Singapore-based AI start up – to launch the ‘AI 4 All Global Hackathon
  • The challenge question seeks to develop solutions in Distributed Computing and Privacy Preserving techniques, such as multi-party computation, in AI.
  • The objective of this hackathon is to promote awareness and subsequently develop solutions that deliver the twin benefit of efficient computing to address the infrastructure challenges, while also not compromising on privacy of data for training AI algorithms

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