NDA (II) 2022 General Ability Test · Question 116 of 150

Correct — B, Sweden. Sweden hosted World Environment Day 2022, held as always on 5 June, under the theme 'Only One Earth'. The choice of host was deliberate rather than routine: World Environment Day itself was created by the United Nations in 1972 at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, so 2022 marked fifty years since that founding meeting and the observance returned to the country where it began. Sweden had hosted once before, in 1991 at Stockholm.

• (a)Canada — Canada has hosted World Environment Day three times — in 1976, in 1986 and most recently at Ottawa in 2017 under the theme 'Connecting People to Nature' — but not in 2022.
• (c)South Africa — South Africa hosted in 1995 at Pretoria. Its association with global environmental summitry — most famously the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg — makes it a plausible guess, but it was not the 2022 host.
• (d)Brazil — Brazil hosted in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro and again in 2012 at Brasilia, both years of major Earth Summits in the country. Neither is 2022, and the fiftieth-anniversary logic pointed to Stockholm rather than Rio.

World Environment Day is observed every year on 5 June and is led by the United Nations Environment Programme. A different country hosts each year and a theme is announced with it, which sets the focus of campaigns worldwide. The observance was established at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm from 5 to 16 June 1972 — the meeting that also led to the creation of UNEP.

Host-country questions look like pure memory, but they usually have an anniversary or a summit sitting behind them, and spotting that link turns guesswork into reasoning. Here 2022 was the fiftieth year since the 1972 Stockholm conference, which is why Sweden was chosen and why an international meeting on the environment was convened in Stockholm that same June. It is worth keeping a short host-and-theme list for the years around the exam you are writing: 2021 went to Pakistan with 'Ecosystem restoration', 2022 to Sweden with 'Only One Earth', and 2023 to Ivory Coast with 'Solutions to Plastic Pollution'. India has hosted four times, most recently at New Delhi in 2018 with 'Beat Plastic Pollution'.

• World Environment Day is observed on 5 June each year and is led by the United Nations Environment Programme.
• It was established by the United Nations in 1972 at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, held from 5 to 16 June that year.
• Sweden hosted in 2022 with the theme 'Only One Earth', fifty years after that Stockholm conference; Sweden had also hosted in 1991.
• Pakistan hosted in 2021 with 'Ecosystem restoration' and Ivory Coast in 2023 with 'Solutions to Plastic Pollution'.
• India has hosted four times — 1975, 1977, 2011 and 2018, the last with the theme 'Beat Plastic Pollution'.

• Assuming the host is whichever country recently held a big climate summit — the host rotates on its own schedule.
• Mixing up the theme with the host, since both change every year.
• Confusing World Environment Day on 5 June with World Ozone Day on 16 September or Earth Day on 22 April.

As this host-country pick, as a theme-of-the-year question, or as a match-the-day-to-its-date list.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  World Environment Day is observed every year on

  • (a)22 April
  • (b)5 June
  • (c)16 September
  • (d)3 December

  Answer(b) 5 June — the date on which the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment opened.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The United Nations Environment Programme was created in the wake of which conference?

  • (a)The Rio Earth Summit, 1992
  • (b)The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, 1972
  • (c)The Kyoto Conference, 1997
  • (d)The Johannesburg Summit, 2002

  Answer(b) The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, 1972 — the same meeting that gave rise to World Environment Day.