Consider the following statements and select the correct answer from the options given below: Statement 1: Uttarakhand is highly vulnerable to climate change. Statement 2: Climate change is causing water stress and depleting biodiversity in Uttarakhand.
- (a)Only statement 1 is correct
- (b)Only statement 1 is correct and statement 2 is incorrect
- (c)Statements 1 and 2 are both correct
- (d)Both the statements are incorrect
Correct — C, Statements 1 and 2 are both correct.
Uttarakhand is overwhelmingly mountainous — over 85% hill terrain, with the plains of Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts lying outside the hills. The hill tract carries steep young slopes, seismically active rock, and rivers fed by snow, glaciers and a short, intense monsoon.
That is high exposure combined with little room to absorb a shock, which is what high vulnerability describes.
Statement 2 names consequences that are visible on the ground. Hill settlements draw domestic water from springs that lie above the rivers, so falling spring discharge shows up directly as household water stress.
Warming along the altitude gradient pushes treelines and species ranges upslope, and high-elevation habitat is squeezed as they move. Both halves of statement 2 therefore hold.
The stem asks only whether each line is correct, not whether one explains the other. Both are, so the key is Statements 1 and 2 are both correct.
Carry away the habit rather than the fact: test each statement on its own against the record before you look at the option wording.
- (a)Only statement 1 is correct — Choosing this requires statement 2 to fail. It belongs to a stem whose second line overreaches — one claiming, say, that climate change is the sole cause of shortages in the hills, which the record would not carry.
As printed it also asserts exactly what option b asserts. Two options carrying the same proposition cannot both be the key, so the decision has to be made on statement 2 itself.
- (b)Only statement 1 is correct and statement 2 is incorrect — This spells out the same position as option a: statement 1 in, statement 2 out. To take it you must find a fault in the second line, and its two assertions — water stress and biodiversity depletion — are both documented across the Indian Himalaya.
It is the right answer to a paired-statement item whose second line is false, such as a version claiming climate change has eased water availability in the hills.
- (d)Both the statements are incorrect — Taking this means denying that a predominantly mountainous state with glacier-fed headwaters and spring-dependent villages is highly exposed to climatic change, and denying the water and habitat effects along with it.
It is the key in an item where both statements contradict the established record, which is why it repays reading before it is dismissed.
Climate vulnerability is not the same thing as climate change. Assessments commonly build it from three parts: exposure to climatic hazards, the sensitivity of the people and ecosystems exposed, and the adaptive capacity available to cope.
A mountain state stands high on the first two. Steep terrain concentrates rainfall into flash floods and landslides, livelihoods rest on rain-fed farming, forests and spring water, and remoteness limits the infrastructure that would buffer a shock.
Uttarakhand's climate story is where its physical geography, its water supply and its disaster management meet, so the same material serves questions on Himalayan rivers, protected areas, hill agriculture and state planning.
The form here is a plain two-statement correctness check. It is settled by reading each line literally against the documented record, not by searching for a hidden causal link between them.
- Uttarakhand is administratively counted wholly within the Indian Himalayan Region, and physiographically spans the Greater Himalaya, Lesser Himalaya, Shivalik and the Bhabar–Terai plains belt.
- The Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda meet at Devprayag to form the Ganga.
- Gaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri glacier, is the source of the Bhagirathi.
- The National Action Plan on Climate Change includes the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, with the Department of Science and Technology as its nodal agency.
- Hill households in Kumaon and Garhwal have long drawn domestic water from springs, known locally as naula and dhara.
- Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks are inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- High-magnitude disasters in the state include the June 2013 Kedarnath floods and the February 2021 Chamoli flood in the Rishiganga valley.
Both printed statements hold, so the key is option c; options a and b assert the same thing as each other.
- Options a and b carry the same proposition in different words, so picking whichever is read first settles nothing; the decision rests entirely on whether statement 2 holds.
- Reading 'highly vulnerable' as exam exaggeration and marking statement 1 wrong for being broadly worded, when high vulnerability is the ordinary description of a Himalayan state.
- Assuming a state with heavy monsoon rain and glacier-fed rivers cannot face water stress, when hill settlements sit well above those rivers and depend on springs.
- Hunting for a cause-and-effect link between the two lines when the stem asks only whether each one is correct.
- Dismissing option d without reading it — 'both incorrect' is a real outcome in this format, and skipping it removes a check on the reasoning.
This idea turns up as a two-statement correctness check, where the work is judging each line separately against what is documented rather than weighing the lines against each other.
The same material can also be tested as direct recall — the NAPCC mission for the Himalayan ecosystem, the glacier at a river's source, a protected area's status — or as a matching item pairing a driver such as warming with its consequence in the hills.
UPSC_2025_GS1_Q902025Same pairing of climate change with biodiversity loss as the driver and the damage. It differs in what it asks for: that item wants the body behind a named law, an institution-identification task at the supranational level, while this one asks whether two descriptive claims about a single Indian state are correct.
MPPSC_2022_MAINS_PaperII_Q502022The same underlying claim — that climate change degrades an ecosystem and its biodiversity — tested on a different system. That item works on coral reefs and warming, acidifying seas; this one works on a Himalayan state, where the channels are spring water, snow and glacier melt, and upslope habitat shift.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem has which one of the following as its nodal agency?
- (a)Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
- (b)Department of Science and Technology
- (c)Ministry of Jal Shakti
- (d)Ministry of Earth Sciences
Answerb — The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem is run with the Department of Science and Technology as its nodal agency, which is why Himalayan glaciology and mountain-ecosystem research sit there.(a) fails because the environment ministry coordinates the NAPCC as a whole and is nodal for the Green India Mission, not for this one. (c) fails because Jal Shakti's charge is the National Water Mission.
(d) fails because the Ministry of Earth Sciences covers meteorology, seismology and ocean science, and is not the nodal agency named for this mission.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Gaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri glacier, is the source of which one of the following rivers?
- (a)Alaknanda
- (b)Bhagirathi
- (c)Mandakini
- (d)Yamuna
Answerb — The Bhagirathi emerges at Gaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri glacier, and later joins the Alaknanda at Devprayag to form the Ganga.(a) fails because the Alaknanda rises further east, from the Satopanth and Bhagirath Kharak glaciers near Badrinath. (c) fails because the Mandakini rises at the Chorabari glacier above Kedarnath and meets the Alaknanda at Rudraprayag.
(d) fails because the Yamuna's traditional source is Yamunotri, on the Bandarpunch massif, and it is not fed from Gaumukh.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In the hill districts of Uttarakhand, the terms naula and dhara refer to:
- (a)Terraced fields cut into hill slopes
- (b)Traditional spring-fed water sources
- (c)High-altitude alpine meadows
- (d)Glacial lakes held back by moraine
Answerb — A naula is a stone tank built over a spring and a dhara is a spring spout. They are the traditional domestic water sources of Kumaon and Garhwal, which is why weakening spring discharge is felt straight away in the household.(a) fails because terracing shapes a field for cultivation and is not a water source. (c) fails because the high-altitude meadows of Uttarakhand are the bugyals.
(d) fails because moraine-dammed glacial lakes belong to the discussion of glacial lake outburst floods, a hazard rather than a village water supply.