Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 3...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 31 to 40.

        Contrary to the trope of a regulatory vacuum, geoengineering already sits under a dense, restrictive canopy of norms. Since 2008, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) instituted an effective moratorium on ocean fertilization, widened in 2010 to a de facto pause on geoengineering; Parties reaffirmed it in 2016 and again at COP16 in 2024 as outdoor trials proliferated. The moratorium permits only narrowly tailored, justified, small-scale research subject to impact assessment and no transboundary harm, while commercial purposes are excluded. [I] The problem, therefore, is erosion of compliance, not a lacuna of rules.

        Marine interventions are likewise cabined by the London Convention/Protocol: ocean fertilization was effectively prohibited in 2008, and 2013 amendments created a rubric to regulate marine geoengineering, with 2023 guidance deferring activities other than legitimate scientific research. It has signaled restrictions on biomass dumping, ocean alkalinity enhancement, marine cloud brightening, and microbubbles. Exemptions for research are tightly drawn and explicitly preclude commercial elements, acting as a bulwark against carbon-credit schemes masquerading as science. [II] Even so, proposals crowd the horizon.

        Beyond treaty silos, the precautionary principle and duties to prevent transboundary harm – codified in the Rio Declaration and echoed in CBD decisions – loom large. [III] In 2024, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) advised that introducing pollutants or transforming one form of pollution into another could breach United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while human-rights bodies warn that solar and marine schemes may jeopardise life, food, water, health, and Indigenous Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). Modeling even anticipates monsoon disruption; those least responsible for emissions would bear disproportionate risk, including future generations under the Maastricht Principles.

        Despite this architecture, experiments have multiplied: hundreds of open-air and open-water trials, sharply accelerating since 2019. Voluntary carbon markets, abetted by contested COP29 rules on removals, risk opening a “backdoor for commercialization” that undermines mitigation and rewards polluters. [IV] Counter-currents gather: over 500 scholars urge a Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement; the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment and the European Parliament endorse non-use, with Vanuatu, Fiji, and others voicing support; governments are pressed to forbid outdoor trials, withhold public funding and patents, and enforce existing moratoria.

(Adapted from Center for International Environmental Law, Mary Church, “Geoengineering Governance: Restrictive Framework Must Be Upheld and Strengthened,” March 5, 2025)

Question 31. The word moratorium in paragraph 1 mostly means ______.

A. purely symbolic                                        B. temporarily prohibitive

C. broadly permissive                                D. loosely discretionary