Pakistan has signed a new agreement with China to start the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a nearly USD 60 billion project. This has come to the fore at a time when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is on a four-day visit to China. Describing this disputed project as strategically important for both the countries, he also said that it is going to benefit both the countries in many ways.

Imran Khan's joining hands with China for the second phase of CPEC is also surprising because he has been criticizing it before coming to power and has also been raising voice about Chinese interference in Pakistan's politics. But Imran Khan is now bowing down to China. Experts attribute this change in Imran Khan's stance to Pakistan's economic condition, in which he sees only China as a reliable and evergreen friend.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

• The CPEC is a 3,000-km-long route of infrastructure projects connecting China's northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Gwadar port in Pakistan's western province of Balochistan.

• It is a bilateral project between Pakistan and China, aimed at promoting connectivity across Pakistan through a network of highways, railways and pipelines, along with energy, industrial and other infrastructure development projects.

• This will pave the way for China to access the Middle East and Africa from the Gwadar port so that China can gain access to the Indian Ocean and China will in turn undertake development projects in Pakistan to address Pakistan's energy crisis and stabilize the faltering economy. will support.

• CPEC is a part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, aims to connect Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf region, Africa and Europe through a network of land and sea routes.

India's stand on CPEC

• India has protested to China regarding CPEC as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) area also comes under it.

• India is a member of the Quad (India, the US, Australia and Japan) which can provide countries with realistic options for infrastructure and a suitable response to the Chinese.

• For example: Blue Dot Network (BDN) and the 'Build Back Better World (B3W) Initiative'.

The Delimitation Commission has recently submitted its interim report related to the determination of assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir to the associate members i.e. five MPs of the state.

Major Recommendations of Jammu and Kashmir Delimitation Commission

Increase in assembly constituencies

• The commission added seven assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir, as per the mandate conferred under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019.

• The interim report proposes an increase of six seats for the Jammu province, increasing the number of constituencies to 43, an increase of one seat in the Kashmir province and increasing the number of seats to 47 and bringing the two regions almost on par with each other. Is.

• The commission has suggested redrawing the boundaries of most of the assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir. It has reconstituted 28 new constituencies and removed 19 assembly constituencies.

• Reservation in Legislative Assemblies

• The commission has proposed to reserve seven seats for Hindus from Scheduled Castes (SCs) who primarily reside in the Samba-Kathua-Jammu-Udhampur belt and nine seats for Scheduled Tribes (STs). Which will prove to be helpful for the mostly non-Kashmiri speaking Muslims, Gurjars and Bakarwals living in the Rajouri-Poonch belt in Jammu province.

Increase in Lok Sabha seats

• The commission has proposed re-scheduling of Lok Sabha constituencies. Jammu and Kashmir has five parliamentary constituencies, including three from Kashmir and two from Jammu.

• It has proposed a Lok Sabha seat comprising three districts of South Kashmir and two districts of Pir Panjal Valley, Rajouri and Poonch, and will be named Anantnag-Rajouri seat.

Pre-distribution of J&K constituencies

• Earlier the state of Jammu and Kashmir had an 87-member assembly, with 37 in Jammu region, 46 in Kashmir division and 4 in Ladakh. Apart from this, 24 seats were reserved for Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

• It lost its special status on August 5, 2019 after the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and was bifurcated into two union territories (Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh).

delimitation

• According to the Election Commission, delimitation is the act of determining or redefining the boundaries of territorial constituencies (assembly or Lok Sabha seats) in a country or a province having a legislative body.

• The delimitation exercise is carried out by an independent high powered panel known as the Delimitation Commission, whose orders have the force of law and cannot be questioned by any court.

• It has been practiced over the years to redefine the area of ​​a constituency on the basis of its population size (the last census).

• Apart from changing the boundaries of a constituency, this process can also result in a change in the number of seats in the state.

• As per the Constitution, it also includes the reservation of assembly seats for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in the year 1949, and at the time of its formation, the sole purpose of this organization was to build a strong military alliance against Russia and during the NATO alliance it included America, Canada, France, Britain and eight Other European countries were involved and gradually many more European countries were added to it and at present there are 30 countries in the NATO alliance and the NATO alliance works closely with the United Nations. The headquarters of the NATO alliance is in Brussels and the biggest feature of this alliance is that if any country involved in the NATO alliance is attacked, it will be considered an attack on all 30 countries and all 30 countries will take military action together. That is why the NATO alliance is the strongest military alliance in the world. Therefore, questions often arise, whether India should also become a member of NATO to stop China, because since the creation of NATO, India has been invited many times to join it.

NATO and Russia relations

Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and since that time, NATO and Russia have signed several important agreements on cooperation.

Russia-NATO Council

The Russia-NATO Council was established in 2002 to deal with security issues and joint projects. Cooperation between Russia and NATO is now developing in several core areas, including: combating terrorism, military cooperation, cooperation on Afghanistan (including non-military International Security Assistance Force freight traffic by Russia (see NATO Logistics in the Afghan War). ), and fight local drug production), industrial cooperation and weapons non-proliferation.

How did the relationship break down?

On 1 April 2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend all practical cooperation with the Russian Federation in response to the Ukraine crisis, but the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was not suspended.

India's loss due to joining NATO

If India can have many advantages by joining NATO, then it also has many disadvantages. Experts say that there are many internal conflicts in many countries involved in the NATO alliance. There are also conflicts between the countries involved in the NATO alliance and the European Union on many issues and many countries in the NATO alliance also have conflicting stances on the policy related to Russia, the Middle East and China, so if India also joins NATO. If so, then India will also have to get caught in these new types of headaches.

Relations with Russia will deteriorate

Since NATO was formed against Russia itself, if India joins the NATO alliance, the relations between India and Russia will immediately deteriorate and India will not want to spoil its relations with its most reliable ally. Even a day before, during the voting in the United Nations on the issue of Ukraine, India has helped Russia by being absent and India has gone against America, which shows how important Russia is still for India. Not only this, Russia has already expressed displeasure over India's growing strategic agreements with America, so experts say that India would not want to jeopardize its relations with Russia. At the same time, since India still depends on Russia for 60 percent of its military equipment, experts believe that the idea of ​​joining NATO will not be right for India.

The highest glaciers on Mount Everest are melting rapidly due to anthropogenic climate change. This melting activity has reached its highest level. The loss of ice that was done in the past several decades is now happening annually. This was detected by an international research team led by the University of Maine by analyzing weather station data. These data are taken from the world's highest ice core or ice core and the highest automated weather station.

In the higher altitudes, the Himalayan snow has started retreating rapidly. The study warns about the increasing incidence of avalanches at higher altitudes and the diminishing capacity of the water stored in the glacier. More than 100 crore people depend on the water released from the melting of these glaciers for drinking water and irrigation.

At the rate at which the highest glaciers are disappearing, the Mount Everest expedition could become more challenging, said University of Maine climate scientists Marius Potocki and Paul Mayewskijis, as the ice and snow cover will continue to thin in the coming decades. , which will become more difficult to climb.

The team's findings are the result of the latest research from the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest expeditions. Scientists, including six from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, study environmental changes to understand future effects for life on Earth as global temperatures rise.

Mayewski said this latest research confirms the heights that anthropogenic climate change reaches and that other high mountains act as a trailhead or bellwether for glacier systems. The massive decline of the glacier is expected to have a huge impact on the expeditions. Mayewski is a glaciologist and director of the Climate Change Institute of Umen. Mayewski is always involved as a lead scientist for the Everest expedition.

It answers one of the big questions raised by our 2019 NGS-Rolex Mount Everest expedition, he said. In which it was asked, are the highest glaciers on Earth affected by anthropogenic climate change? The answer is yes and has been very important since the late 1990s.

The study points to the important balance that the snow-covered surface provides. The highest mountain glacier systems are prone to loss as much of the ice cover build-up stops changes. It involves passing from a solid to a vapor state and surface melting driven by climatic trends. Everest's highest glacier has served as a watchdog for this delicate balance. Glaciers have also demonstrated that the Earth's roof is also affected by rising temperatures from anthropogenic causes.

The timing and causes of the massive damage in the South Coal Glacier have been ascertained. For this, the researchers used data analyzed from 10-metre-long ice cores and weather stations, as well as photogrammetric and satellite imagery and other records. He estimated that the rate of ice thinning is now approaching about 2 meters per year. The glacier has turned from snowpack to ice, causing a loss of its ability to reflect solar radiation, resulting in an increase in the rapid melting of ice.

Once the ice of the South Coal Glacier has been exposed regularly, about 55 meters of glacier thinning has been estimated to have occurred over a quarter century. Ice on the surface is thinning more than 80 times faster than it took about 2,000 years to form. The researchers noted that there has been an increase in the mass loss of entire surface ice in this region. The shift from permanent snowpack to very high snow cover may have been triggered by climate change since the 1950s, with rising air temperatures accelerating this action. The effects of climate change on glaciers have been most intense since the late 1990s.

Model simulations found that the region's extreme Sun heat means that the loss of surface mass by melting or evaporation can be accelerated by more than 20 causes. Warmer air temperatures played a role in thinning most of the ice. The fall in relative humidity and strong winds were also factors behind this.

Climatic projections for the Himalayas warn of ever-increasing temperatures and massive loss of glaciers. Potocki says that even the summit of Everest is affected by rising temperatures due to anthropogenic factors.

Members of an international team of scientists and climbers led by the National Geographic Society and Tribhuvan University were involved in the Mount Everest expedition.

The expedition established two of the world's highest weather stations (at 8,430 m and 7,945 m), collected the highest ice core ever recorded (at 8,020 m), carried out extensive biodiversity surveys at several altitudes. High altitude helicopter-based lidar scans were carried out.

Elevation records for high-dwelling species were expanded and the history of mountain glaciers was documented. The highest altitude ice core and highest altitude weather station on land are key parts of this new study and recently set two of the expedition's three Guinness World Records.

Source - Down to Earth