• Social media platforms and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) have presented a ‘Voluntary Code of Ethics for the General Election 2019’ to the Election Commission.
• This code will become effective and will enter into force on March 20, 2019 and would remain operational during the election.
• The code’s purpose is to identify measures that the platforms can take to increase confidence in the electoral process.
• It is also to safeguard against misuse that vitiates the “free and fair character” of the Lok Sabha polls.

G7
• The G7 or the Group of Seven is a group of the seven most advanced economies as per the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• The seven countries are Canada, USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Italy. The EU is also represented in the G7.
• These countries, with the seven largest IMF-described advanced economies in the world represent 58% of the global net wealth ($317 trillion).
• The G7 countries also represent more than 46% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) based on nominal values, and more than 32% of the global GDP based on purchasing power parity.

Groundwater types in India
• With about 250 cubic km of extraction in a year, of which 85 per cent is used for agriculture, India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world.
• Almost the entire rural water supply and over half of urban water demand is catered by aquifers.
• It is essential to assess this invaluable, invisible resource for its proper management.
• In India, we divide groundwater resource into dynamic or replenishable and static or in-situ.
• The dynamic component is the annual recharge of aquifers while the static resource is the groundwater volume available at depth of rock formations, stored over hundreds or thousands of years.

Forest Certification
• Forest certification is a global movement initiated in 1990s after Rio Earth Summit.
• It is a market-based non-regulatory conservation tool designed to promote sustainable management of forests and trees outside forests by an independent third party.
• As several developed countries have put trade restrictions on import of non-certified timber, non-timber forest products and wood-based goods into their countries, getting sustainable forest management certificates has become mandatory for exports.

Social forestry
• Social forestry means the management and protection of forest and afforestation of barren and deforested lands with the purpose of helping environmental, social and rural development.
• The term, social forestry, was first used in 1976 by The National Commission on Agriculture, Government of India.
• It was then that India embarked upon the social forestry project with the aim of taking the pressure off currently existing forests by planting trees on all unused and fallow land.
• Social forestry is basically for the people by the people and of the people approach; it is therefore a democratic approach of forest conservation and usage.