At which of the following places is the Secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (I.S.A.) located at present ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Gurugram. The Secretariat (headquarters) of the International Solar Alliance sits in Gurugram district, Haryana, on the campus of the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) at Gwal Pahari on the Gurugram-Faridabad road. India offered to host the Secretariat when the Alliance was created, and the foundation stone of the headquarters was laid at Gwal Pahari by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande in January 2016. That was still the ISA's seat on the day of this exam (December 2019) and remains so today — the ISA is usually described as the first treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation to be headquartered in India.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Paris is where the ISA was LAUNCHED — jointly by India and France on 30 November 2015 at the COP-21 UN climate conference — not where it is based. Launch venue and headquarters are different things, and this is the trap the question is built on.  (b) Tempting, because India is the host country and the ISA's Founding Conference (March 2018) and its Assembly sessions have been held in New Delhi. But the Secretariat itself is not in Delhi; it is on the NISE campus at Gwal Pahari in Gurugram, Haryana.  (d) New York hosts the United Nations headquarters. The ISA is an independent treaty-based organisation, not a UN body or agency (it was later granted observer status at the UN General Assembly), and it has never been seated in New York.

Concept: The International Solar Alliance was conceived by India and France as a coalition of sunshine-rich countries that would pool demand, finance and technology to scale up solar power. It was launched at COP-21 in Paris in November 2015; its Framework Agreement was opened for signature at COP-22 in Marrakech in November 2016; and it entered into force in December 2017 once fifteen countries had ratified, turning the ISA into a full treaty-based intergovernmental organisation. Membership was initially limited to countries lying wholly or partly between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn; an amendment to the Framework Agreement later opened it to all UN member states.

State PCS 2019 Q28 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q28 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer