Russia’s problem with the Black Sea grain deal

GS Paper – 2 (International Relations)

President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was considering withdrawing from the Black Sea grain deal as he accused the West of cheating Moscow because it still faced obstacles getting its own agricultural goods to world markets. 

What is Black Sea grain deal?

• The United Nations and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative last July to help tackle a global food crisis worsened by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and blockade of its Black Sea ports.
• It allows food and fertilizer to be exported from three Ukrainian ports – Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi (Yuzhny). The deal has been extended three times, most recently until 17 July 2023.
• Nearly 32 million tonnes of mostly corn and wheat have so far been exported by Ukraine under the deal.
• The initiative also allows for the safe export of ammonia – a key ingredient in nitrate fertilizer – but none has been shipped.
• To convince Russia to agree to the initiative, a three-year pact was also struck last July in which the United Nations agreed to help Moscow overcome any obstacles to its own food and fertilizer shipments.
• While Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions imposed after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have amounted to a barrier to shipments.

Why were the deals needed?

• The poorest in the world were hit worst by the rising global food prices. The U.N. The World Food Programme (WFP) warned in March last year that its ability to feed some 125 million people was under threat because 50% of its grain came from Ukraine.
• Between 2018–2020, Africa imported $3.7 billion in wheat (32% of total African wheat imports) from Russia and another $1.4 billion from Ukraine (12% of total African wheat imports), according to the United Nations.
• The United Nations said last year that 36 countries count on Russia and Ukraine for more than half of their wheat imports, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Under the Black Sea grain deal, more than 625,000 tonnes of grain has so far been shipped by the WFP for aid operations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Yemen. In 2022, WFP procured more than half its global wheat grain from Ukraine.

Russian Complaints

• Putin complained that Russia has been cheated by the West because its own exports still faced problems. The United States has dismissed Russia’s grievances.
• Putin said Russia only agreed to the deal for the sake of countries in Africa and Latin America but that only around 3.2-3.4% of the grain goes to the world’s poorest countries while 40% went to prosperous countries.
• According to U.N. data, around 3% of exports under the Black Sea deal has gone to low-income countries, while high income countries get around 44% and the rest to middle-income states.
• The United Nations has always said the deal was a commercial enterprise and not intended to be entirely humanitarian, but that it benefited poorer countries by helping lower food prices globally.

Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 conferred on Gita Press

GS Paper - 2 (Polity)

The Gandhi Peace Prize for 2021 will be conferred on Gita Press, Gorakhpur, the culture ministry announced on 18 June 2023. The decision was taken by a jury headed by PM Narendra Modi.

More about the Prize

• The conferment of Gandhi Peace Prize on Gita Press, on completion of 100 years of its establishment, is recognition of the work done by the institution in community service.
• The prize recognises Gita Press’s “outstanding contribution towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violent and other Gandhian methods”.
• The prize, instituted by the government of India in 1995 to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi as a tribute to the ideals espoused by him, carries an amount of Rs 1 crore, a citation, a plaque and a traditional handicraft object.

About Gita Press

• Established in 1923, Gita Press is the world’s largest publisher of Hindu religious texts, with 41.7 crore books — 16.21 crore of them copies of the Bhagvad Gita — published in 14 languages, to its credit.
• Its “main objective is to promote and spread the principles of Sanatan Dharma, the Hindu religion among the general public by publishing Gita, Ramayana, Upanishads, Puranas, discourses of eminent saints and other character-building books and magazines and marketing them at highly subsidised prices”.

Cassini finds phosphorous on Enceladus

GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)

Phosphorus, a key chemical element for many biological processes, has been found in icy grains emitted by Enceladus, the small moon of Saturn, into space and is likely abundant in its subsurface ocean, a new study published in journal Nature reported.

More about the Study

• An international team of researchers has unearthed a piece of crucial evidence hinting at the existence of an essential life element beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.
• NASA’s Cassini, a space probe launched to scrutinize Saturn and its extensive system of moons and rings, has delivered crucial insights over its 13-year journey. Data retrieved from Cassini has played an instrumental role in this discovery.
• Phosphorus, the least abundant of the essential elements necessary for biological processes, hadn’t been detected until now.
• The element is a building block for DNA, which forms chromosomes and carries genetic information, and is present in the bones of mammals, cell membranes, and ocean-dwelling plankton.
• Phosphorus is also a fundamental part of energy-carrying molecules present in all life on Earth. Life wouldn’t be possible without it.

Why is it Important?

• This new result reveals the clear chemical signature of substantial amounts of phosphorus salts inside icy particles ejected into space by the small moon’s plume.
• It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth.
• With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life.
• The research, published in the journal Nature as “Detection of Phosphates Originating from Enceladus’ Ocean," includes contributions from scientists across ten global institutions.

Groundwater extraction affected the earth’s rotation

GS Paper I - (Geography)

According to a new study, Groundwater pumped up from the earth and moved elsewhere to quench the thirst of humans and their activities resulted in the earth’s axis tilting nearly 80 cm to the east.

More about the news:

• The same study also found that nearly 2,150 billion tonnes of groundwater has been pumped and drained into the oceans in 1993-2010, making it one of the important contributors to global sea-level rise.
• The earth’s rotational pole is the point along which the planet rotates.
• This point, which lies on the axis of rotation of the planet, moves in a process called polar motion.
• In other words, the location of the earth’s pole varies relative to the earth’s crust.
• Unlike a globe, which has a fixed axis and rotates stably, the earth’s axis wobbles.
• It’s more like a spinning top gone off kilter, where the earth’s rotational pole tends to wander in a circular pattern several meters wide every year due to the weather, seasonal changes, the molten core, and even powerful hurricanes.
• Scientists have been able to track this motion relative to astronomical phenomena such as the centres of bright galaxies or quasars.
• They have also known for a long time that the movement of water can affect the earth’s rotation.
• A study published in 2016, for example, showed how the movement of water around the world contributed to the wobble in the earth’s axis.But the role of groundwater hadn’t been considered before.

Observations of the study

• To bridge this gap, a group of scientists at the Seoul National University led by Professor Ki-Weon Seo used a climate model that linked the shift in the earth’s axis with the movement of water through melting ice caps and glaciers. The numbers did not line up.
• The scientists added the effects of water stored in reservoirs and dams but to no avail.
• The model only matched the observed drift of the axis once they added groundwater to the equation.
• The scientists also said that the location of groundwater depletion is important because that affects how much the axis wanders.
• Using their model, they found that pumping groundwater from mid latitude areas would impact the drift the most.
• About 95% of India’s groundwater depletion was traced to north India where groundwater is primarily used for irrigation.
• Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and western Uttar Pradesh have critical groundwater levels due to the indiscriminate use of groundwater, while Rajasthan and Gujarat have low groundwater levels due to arid climate.
• Groundwater availability is also low in parts of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh due to the crystalline nature of the aquifers found here.