The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 5 September 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 4 September 2023

• China’s Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that President Xi Jinping will for the first time skip a G-20 summit, with the Chinese Premier and second-ranked leader Li Qiang instead deputed to attend the September 9-10 meet in New Delhi.
• No reasons have been given for Mr. Xi skipping the summit, a key annual diplomatic event that China has usually placed special emphasis on, viewing it as an important platform to shape the global order and exert its rising clout.
• Xi only recently attended the BRICS summit in South Africa on August 24, when he hailed the decision to expand the grouping. Mr. Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not have a formal bilateral meeting in South Africa but had an informal conversation on the sidelines, when they discussed the as yet unresolved crisis along the Line of Actual Control.

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• “Gender equality and environmental goals are mutually reinforcing and create a virtuous circle that will help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2021)
• The impact of climate change is one that has profound consequences for humans and has emerged as one of the biggest global challenges in recent decades.
• The effects of climate change vary according to location, socioeconomic status, and gender. An International Labour Organization study (2019) said that “…in 2030, 2.2 percent of total working hours worldwide will be lost to high temperatures, a productivity loss equivalent to 80 million full- time jobs”.
• The United Nations (2009) highlighted that across genders, women are considered to be highly vulnerable and disproportionately affected by climate change than men to the impact of climate change.
• In addition, women across the world face severe risks to their health, safety, and quality of life. However, women in developing and less developed countries (especially in low-income areas) are more vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on natural resources and labour-intensive work for their livelihood.
• Women are more likely to live in poverty than men, which is just one of several social, economic, and cultural variables that makes them more susceptible to the effects of climate change.
• Women from low-income households are more at risk because they are more responsible for food, water, and other homely unpaid work.
• Despite being the backbone of the food production system, women own only about 10% of the land used for farming. A McAllister (2023) study has highlighted how there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.

• According to a UN study, most (80%) of those displaced by climate-related disasters are women and girls.
• Climate change impacts can particularly exacerbate poverty and socioeconomic vulnerabilities among women. Climate change is also linked to women’s inequality.
• According to estimates, 130 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2050 due to climate change risks, natural disasters, and food inflation, impacting women’s inequality.
• Women’s participation in climate policy decision-making at all levels is crucial for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies as well as getting decent employment.

• In a multi-tiered governance system such as the one in India, a Union of States, electoral democracy works by allowing people to choose their representatives for each tier based on their perception of who is best suited to represent them for each specific tier.

• The annual training exercise, Trishul, of the Western Air Command (WAC) of the Indian Air Force (IAF) began on Monday. The exercise will see activation of all air assets and force multipliers spread across the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.
• “The exercise is scheduled from September 4 to 14 and will validate the command’s operational preparedness and will see the employment of all the frontline assets from fighter jets, transport aircraft, helicopters and other force multipliers in high tempo,” a defence official said.
• The exercise will be paused for a few days coinciding with the G- 20 summit when the armed forces will be on high alert, coinciding with the high-profile event and the threat perception.

• After Chandrayaan-3’s rover Pragyan, its lander, Vikram, has been put into sleep mode. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday said that it had put Vikram into sleep mode around 8 a.m.
• Hours before, the ISRO said, Vikram had achieved another significant milestone as it successfully undertook a hop experiment, elevating itself by about 40 cm as expected and landing safely at a distance of 30 cm to 40 cm. This “kick-start” enthuses future sample return and human missions, it said.
• On November 17, 1967, NASA’s Surveyor 6 carried out a lunar hop, becoming the first spacecraft to do lift-off from a celestial body.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that a landmark deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain safely through the Black Sea amid the war won’t be restored until the West meets Moscow’s demands on its own agricultural exports.
• Putin’s remarks dashed hopes that his talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could revive the agreement, seen as vital for global food supplies, especially in Africa, West Asia and the rest of Asia.
• Russia refused to extend the deal in July, complaining that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored. It said restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade, though it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.

• About Black Sea Grain Initiative:
• It was set up to resume vital food and fertilizer exports from Ukraine to the rest of the world.
• It was brokered between Russia and Ukraine by the United Nations and Turkey.
• The Initiative allowed exports of grain, other foodstuffs, and fertilizer, including ammonia, to resume through a safe maritime humanitarian corridor from three key Ukrainian ports: Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi, to the rest of the world.

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