The Cartagena Protocol, to which India is a party, is related to

Correct — B, biosafety, negotiated under the aegis of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is the first supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It was adopted at Montreal on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003; the name comes from Cartagena in Colombia, where the negotiating session was originally to have concluded in February 1999. What it governs is the transboundary movement of living modified organisms — organisms carrying novel combinations of genetic material — and it works through advance informed agreement, under which an exporter must notify and obtain consent from the importing country before the first shipment of an LMO meant for release into the environment. India ratified it in January 2003, and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is the national focal point.

• (a)combat the green house gasses and to reduce the global warming and climate change — Greenhouse gases belong to a different treaty family altogether — the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, with the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015 sitting under it. Nothing in the Cartagena text sets an emission obligation.
• (c)combat the ozone depleting substances to protect the human lives from diseases — Ozone-depleting substances are controlled by the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which sits under the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Montreal is where Cartagena was adopted, which is exactly why this option is placed here.
• (d)combat the phenomenon of desertification by improving dry land farming in dry regions — Desertification is the subject of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, agreed in 1994 — one of the three Rio conventions alongside the CBD and the UNFCCC, but a separate instrument with no protocol of this kind.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, has three objectives: conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from genetic resources. Two protocols hang from it. Cartagena, in 2000, handles the risk side — the safe handling and transfer of living modified organisms. Nagoya, in 2010, handles the benefit-sharing side of access to genetic resources. A third instrument, the Nagoya–Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on liability and redress for damage from LMOs, was added in 2010 and came into force in 2018.

Every option here names a real environmental problem and a real treaty regime, so the item is decided purely by which parent convention the word Cartagena attaches to. Fix the four families once — climate under UNFCCC, ozone under Vienna, desertification under UNCCD, biodiversity under CBD — and this whole class of question becomes mechanical. The subtle bait is Montreal: the Cartagena Protocol was adopted in Montreal, and Montreal is also the name of the ozone protocol, so a half-remembered fact points to the wrong option.

• The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety was adopted on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003.
• It is the first protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity and regulates transboundary movement of living modified organisms.
• Its central mechanism is advance informed agreement, backed by the Biosafety Clearing-House and a precautionary approach.
• India ratified the Protocol in January 2003; the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is the national focal point.
• The Nagoya Protocol of 2010, on access and benefit sharing, is the CBD's other protocol.

• Letting Montreal, the city where Cartagena was adopted, pull you towards the ozone treaty.
• Confusing the Cartagena Protocol with the Nagoya Protocol, the CBD's other offspring.
• Assuming any treaty with a Latin American city in its name concerns climate.

Asked as a one-line subject match; the examiner supplies one option from each of the four big environmental treaty families and lets the city names do the work.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Nagoya Protocol, adopted in 2010, deals with which one of the following?

  • (a)Transboundary movement of living modified organisms
  • (b)Access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use
  • (c)Persistent organic pollutants
  • (d)Liability for oil pollution damage at sea

  Answer(b) Access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use — it is the CBD's benefit-sharing protocol, in force since 2014.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following treaties is NOT one of the three conventions opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit?

  • (a)Convention on Biological Diversity
  • (b)UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
  • (c)UN Convention to Combat Desertification
  • (d)Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer

  Answer(d) Montreal Protocol — agreed in 1987, five years before Rio, and under the Vienna Convention.