Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Sustainable development should take place without damaging the environment and development

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Sustainable development should take place without damaging the environment and development in the present time should not compromise with the needs of the future generations.
Reason (R) : Agenda 21 was signed by world leaders in 1995.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, (A) is true, but (R) is false. The Assertion is simply the standard definition of sustainable development, almost word for word: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That formulation comes from Our Common Future, the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland — which is why it is universally called the Brundtland definition. It is true. The Reason fails on its date. Agenda 21 was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 — not in 1995. Nothing about that document belongs to 1995; the year the Reason names holds other things entirely, such as the first Conference of the Parties to the climate convention at Berlin and the World Summit for Social Development at Copenhagen, but not Agenda 21. Note also that the '21' in Agenda 21 refers to the twenty-first century the plan was written for, not to any year, and that even a date-corrected Reason would not explain the Assertion: the Brundtland definition is from 1987 and so predates Agenda 21 by five years. A cause cannot follow its effect. Finally, read the printed code before you tick anything on this paper. This booklet inverts the familiar UPSC arrangement — here (a) means both true but (R) is NOT the explanation, and (d) means both true and (R) IS the explanation. Option (b) happens to read the same in both layouts, so the inversion does not bite on this particular question, but it bites on the other nineteen assertion-reason items in this paper.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correct about the explanatory relationship but wrong about the facts, which is not enough. The Reason is not true: Agenda 21 belongs to the Rio Earth Summit of June 1992, not to 1995. Once a statement carries a wrong date it is false, and the question stops before the explanation test is reached. Be aware too that in this booklet option (a) does not carry its usual UPSC meaning — here it is the 'both true, R does NOT explain A' slot, the reverse of what most candidates have drilled.  (c) Gets both halves the wrong way round. The Assertion is the settled Brundtland definition of sustainable development from Our Common Future (1987) and is plainly true, while the Reason misdates Agenda 21 by three years and is false. This option is picked by candidates who half-remember that Agenda 21 is a genuine Rio document and, seeing a familiar name, wave the Reason through without checking its year.  (d) Fails twice over. The Reason is false on its date, so 'both true' is already wrong; and even with the date repaired the logic would not hold, because Agenda 21 was adopted at Rio in 1992 while the definition in the Assertion was published in the Brundtland report of 1987. A document cannot be the reason for a definition that already existed five years before it. This is also the option in this booklet that means 'R IS the explanation' — the slot that reads as (a) on a normal UPSC paper.

Concept: Sustainable development entered global policy through the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up by the United Nations in 1983 and chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. Its 1987 report, Our Common Future, defined the idea as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs — the phrasing quoted in the Assertion. Five years later the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, met at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and turned the idea into a programme. Rio produced the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of Forest Principles and Agenda 21, a comprehensive non-binding action plan for sustainable development in the twenty-first century, and it opened the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity for signature.

State PCS 2025 Q113 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q113 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer