United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019 was held at which of the following cities?
- (a)Paris
- (b)Geneva
- (c)Doha
- (d)New York
Correct — D, New York. The UN Climate Action Summit 2019 was held at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 23 September 2019, convened by Secretary-General António Guterres on the margins of the opening of the UN General Assembly's 74th session, under the slogan 'A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.' Guterres asked leaders to arrive with concrete plans rather than speeches — specifically, enhanced nationally determined contributions and a path to net zero by 2050. For India this summit is doubly memorable: Prime Minister Narendra Modi used it to announce that India's renewable-energy target would be raised well beyond 175 GW, towards 450 GW, and to launch the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), whose secretariat is in New Delhi. The key point of the question is institutional, not geographical — a summit convened by the Secretary-General is held at UN Headquarters, which is in New York.
- (a)Paris — Paris hosted COP21 in December 2015, which produced the Paris Agreement — the single most famous climate venue there is, which is precisely why it is placed first here. But COP sessions are meetings of the parties to the UNFCCC hosted by a rotating presidency; the 2019 Climate Action Summit was a different animal, convened by the UN Secretary-General at UN Headquarters.
- (b)Geneva — Geneva is the UN's second major hub and hosts the World Meteorological Organization, which co-sponsors the IPCC and provides its secretariat — so it feels climate-adjacent. It is not, however, where the General Assembly meets or where the Secretary-General convened this leaders' summit.
- (c)Doha — Doha hosted COP18 in 2012, which adopted the Doha Amendment extending the Kyoto Protocol's second commitment period. Again a real climate venue, but from a different event and a different year.
There are two distinct kinds of global climate meeting and this question lives on the difference between them. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the annual decision-making body of the UNFCCC, hosted by a rotating country presidency — Paris 2015 (COP21), Doha 2012 (COP18), Madrid 2019 (COP25). A UN Climate Summit, by contrast, is convened by the Secretary-General under the General Assembly's umbrella, has no negotiating mandate, and is held at UN Headquarters in New York to extract political pledges from heads of government. The 2019 edition, on 23 September, was the flagship attempt to raise ambition ahead of the 2020 deadline for countries to submit strengthened NDCs under the Paris Agreement.
Reason from the convenor, not from the theme. If the Secretary-General calls it and world leaders are already in town for the General Assembly's high-level week in September, the venue is New York — that logic answers a whole family of questions about UN summits. The trap here is that three of the four options are genuine climate-conference cities, so recognition alone will not separate them; only the COP-versus-Summit distinction will. Note the exam timing too: this paper was written on 15 December 2019, as COP25 was closing in Madrid — it was scheduled for 2-13 December 2019, overran by about 44 hours (the longest COP on record) and its closing plenary ended on 15 December 2019, the very day of this paper, so both events were fresh in the news and easy to conflate.
- The UN Climate Action Summit 2019 was held at UN Headquarters, New York, on 23 September 2019, convened by Secretary-General António Guterres.
- Its theme was 'A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.', and it sought enhanced NDCs and net-zero-by-2050 commitments ahead of the 2020 Paris Agreement milestone.
- India announced at the summit that its renewable-energy target would be raised beyond 175 GW towards 450 GW.
- India launched the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) at this summit; its secretariat is in New Delhi.
- It was not a COP: COP21 was Paris (2015), COP18 was Doha (2012) and COP25 was Madrid (December 2019).
- Treating the Climate Action Summit as a COP and answering with a COP host city; the distractors are all real COP venues.
- Confusing the 2019 Climate Action Summit (New York, September) with COP25 (Madrid, December 2019) — both fall in the same year and the exam was held days after the latter.
- Assuming Geneva because so many UN bodies sit there; the General Assembly and the Secretary-General's leaders' summits are in New York.
UPPSC asks the venue or the year of a named international summit as a direct one-liner, and sometimes as a 'summit — place, which is NOT correctly matched' pair set; UPSC prefers to ask what a conference produced or what an agreement contains, so learn each summit as venue plus year plus outcome document.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty drawn at
- (a) United Nations' Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972
- (b) UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992
- (c) World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002
- (d) UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen, 2009
Answer(b) UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992
Exactly the same skill — attaching a climate milestone to the conference and city that produced it, with the wrong options again drawn from the real list of environmental summits.
With reference to the Agreement at the UNFCCC Meeting in Paris in 2015, which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. The Agreement was signed by all the member countries of the UN and it will go into effect in 2017. 2. The Agreement aims to limit the greenhouse gas emissions so that the rise in average global temperature by the end of this century does not exceed 2°C or even 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 3. Developed countries acknowledged their historical responsibility in global warming and committed to donate $1000 billion a year from 2020 to help developing countries to cope with climate change. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
- (a) 1 and 3 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) 2 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(b) 2 only
The Paris half of the same topic — it explains why Paris is the reflex answer for any climate question, and gives the ambition framework the 2019 New York summit was convened to strengthen.
Which of the following is NOT correctly matched ? (Summit) (Place)
- (a) East Asia Summit, 2020 – Singapore
- (b) G-20 Summit, 2019 – Osaka
- (c) G-7 Summit, 2019 – Biarritz
- (d) East Asia Summit, 2019 – Bangkok
Answer(a) East Asia Summit, 2020 – Singapore
The very next year UPPSC turned the same summit-to-venue idea into a NOT-correctly-matched set — proof that the commission expects you to carry a running table of international summits and their host cities.
The "Agenda – 21" of Rio Summit, 1992 is related to -
- (a) Preservation of ozone layer
- (b) Sustainable development
- (c) Polluter – Pays principle
- (d) Environmental education
Answer(b) Sustainable development
Same family — a named global environmental summit and what came out of it; Rio 1992 is the summit that created the UNFCCC under which every later climate meeting, including the 2019 New York summit, operates.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) was launched by India at which international event?
- (a)COP21, Paris, 2015
- (b)UN Climate Action Summit, New York, 2019
- (c)G-20 Summit, Osaka, 2019
- (d)COP25, Madrid, 2019
Answer(b) UN Climate Action Summit, New York, 2019 — announced by the Prime Minister on 23 September 2019; the CDRI secretariat is in New Delhi.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following pairs of climate conference and host city is correctly matched?
- (a)COP18 — Paris
- (b)COP21 — Doha
- (c)COP25 — Madrid
- (d)COP21 — Copenhagen
Answer(c) COP25 — Madrid — held in December 2019 under Chile's presidency; COP18 was Doha (2012) and COP21 was Paris (2015).