UPSC Prelims 2015 · Question 43 of 98

UPSC Prelims 2015 question on Rio Plus 20 Conference

What is the Rio+20 Conference, often mentioned in the news?

  1. It is the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
  2. It is a Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization
  3. It is a Conference of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change
  4. It is a Conference of the Member Countries of the Convention on Biological Diversity
Show answer

Answer: A. It is the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

Verdict

The answer is that it is the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Rio+20 met in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.

Analysis

The name marks twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit held in the same city, and the conference produced the outcome document The Future We Want, which set in motion the process that led to the Sustainable Development Goals. A WTO ministerial meeting is a trade negotiation and takes a different naming convention. A conference of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific assessment body rather than a summit of this kind. Meetings of the parties to the biodiversity convention are numbered as Conferences of the Parties rather than named for an anniversary.

Source

United Nations material on Rio+20.

How to crack it

Decode the plus notation, since it always signals an anniversary of a founding conference held in the same city. Rio+20 therefore points back to Rio 1992, the Earth Summit, which was about environment and development, and the successor must be about sustainable development. Beijing+20 works identically for the women's conference. Recognising the naming convention answers a whole family of questions without recalling the outcome text.

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