Marking World Environment Day
Nalaka Gunawardene and Vindana Ariyawansa
 World Environment Day (WED) is observed on
June 5. It is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and
most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. WED
activities take place all year round, but climax on June 5 involving
everyone from everywhere.Because this is the International Year of
Forests, the theme for WED 2011 is 'Forests: Nature at Your Service'.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
which coordinates the WED events, says this year's commemorations are
expected to be the largest and most widely celebrated globally.
 1. World Environment Day commemorates the day that the first United
Nations Conference on the Human Environment began. The Conference on
the Human Environment was from June 5 to 16, 1972. This was the
first major conference on international environmental issues, attended
by 113 countries, and marked a turning point in the development of
international environmental treaties. In which European city was this
historic conference held?
2. While World Environment Day is now observed in most countries of
the world the main international event is hosted every year by a
different city with a different theme. In 2010, it was held in Kigali,
Rwanda, under the theme 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future'. Which
South Asian capital city is hosting WED 2011 main event under the
theme 'Forests: Nature at Your Service'?
3. According to UNEP, forests support 80 percent of land-based
biodiversity (both plants and animals) that live in them. Many of the
world's most threatened and endangered animals live in forests, making
them crucial to sustaining the planet's ecosystems. Forests also provide
a home to more than 300 million people worldwide who are forest dwellers
by tradition. What is the percentage of the world's land area
currently estimated to be under forests (of any kind)?
4. 2011 marks the birth centenary of a renowned Pakistani poet
and one of the most famous poets in the entire Urdu language. Born in
Sialkot in British India in 1911, he became the first editor of the
Pakistan Times in 1947 and excelled in many areas of creative and
journalistic writing. He was the first Asian poet to receive the Lenin
Peace Prize, awarded by the Soviet Union in 1963. He was also nominated
for the Nobel Prize for literature shortly before his death in 1984.
Who was he?
5. The British film Chariots of Fire (1981), which won four Oscars
(out of seven nominations), was based on the true story of two British
athletes competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. One of them was
the "Flying Scotsman", Eric Liddell. The other was an Englishman of
Jewish origin who overcomes anti-Semitism and class prejudice in
order to compete in the 100 metre race, which he wins. What was the
name of this athlete?
6. Time is the world's largest weekly news magazine (by circulation)
and has a domestic (US) audience of 20 million and a global audience of
25 million. Time magazine was the first weekly news magazine in the
United States and founded in 1923 by two young Americans, who had
previously worked together as chairman and managing editor respectively
of the Yale Daily News. Who founded Time?
7. There is no precise demarcation of where the upper atmosphere ends
and near space begins. Thus, the criteria for what constitutes human
spaceflight also vary. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI)
Sporting Code for astronautics recognizes only those flights that exceed
an altitude of 100 kilometres (or 62 miles). This is now widely
accepted. However, in the United States, professional, military and
commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of how many
kilometres are awarded astronaut wings?
8. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an
independent think tank, monitors the military expenditure by countries
of the world, based on analysis of national data. According their latest
report, released on March 14, 2011, the four largest importers of
conventional weapons in 2006-10 are located in Asia. Which Asian
country is the world's largest arms importer, having received nine
percent of the total volume of international arms transfers during
2006-10?
9. According to the same report by SIPRI, which country is the
world's largest exporter of military equipment, accounting for 30
percent of global arms exports in 2006-10?
10. Martin Wickramasinghe wrote two works of autobiographical
nature. The first, titled Ape Gama (Our Village) in 1941 was more
reminiscences of childhood. In 1961, when he turned 70, he wrote
a more structured autobiography that traced his self-taught journey from
the southern village of Koggala to become the island's foremost Man of
Letters. What was this autobiography called?
11. Many critical essays and reviews have been written about the life
and work of Lester James Peries. One of the earliest in-depth analyses
was a book published in Colombo in 1970, titled The Lonely Artist: A
Critical Introduction to the films of Lester James Peries. Name the
Lankan journalist and movie critic who wrote it, the first
book-level treatment of Lester's work to that date.
12. This Indian cricketer was named 'the greatest living exponent
of his craft' and an Asian Hero by TIME magazine. Sir Donald Bradman,
cricket's greatest batsman, saw this cricketer on television in 1996 and
remarked: 'I never saw myself play. But I feel that this player is
playing much the same [way] I used to play.' In January 2008, then
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that he should be
conferred with an honourary Knighthood for his contribution to
international cricket. Who is this player?
13. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led
coalition, the Coalition military developed a set of playing cards to
help troops to identify the most-wanted members of then Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's government - most of them high-ranking Ba'ath
Party members or members of the Revolutionary Command Council. The cards
were officially named the 'personality identification playing cards'.
Which card in the deck was assigned to Saddam Hussein himself?
14. The world's first computer programmer was a woman. Trained
as a mathematician, this young aristocratic English woman wrote the
first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine in 1843. She based
them on Jacquard's punch-card idea and meant to be used on Charles
Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical
engine. A visionary, she also foresaw a day when computers will go well
beyond mere calculating or number-crunching. Who was she?
15. On 4 May 2011, Sri Lanka Tea Board and tea industry launched a
logo to brand Ozone Friendly Ceylon Tea, thus becoming the first
tea-growing and exporting country in the world to use this claim in
product marketing. This is because over the past few years, all tea
plantations in Sri Lanka have phased out using a certain chemical
that was earlier widely used for fumigating (treating) the soil against
pests. This chemical, which damages the ozone layer in the upper
atmosphere, is controlled by the Montreal Protocol and is to be
completely phased out worldwide by 2015. What is this chemical?
Answers will be published next week
Last week's answers
1. Bangladesh's national anthem, "Amar Sonar Bangla"
2. Pandit W D Amaradeva
3. Nepal (lyrics by poet Byakul Maila, whose real name is Pradeep Kumar
Rai)
4. Anthony Hopkins
5. Natalie Portman
6. Anuradhapura is the worst affected district
7. China
8. Ivan Peries (1921-1988)
9. Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914-2009)
10. Arulanantham Suresh Joachim
11. Steffi Graf
12. Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister from 1962 to 1986
13. Pythagoras
14. D J (Devapura Jayasena) Wimalasurendra
15. Dirk Nowitzki |
