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.

        As climate impacts outstrip what mitigation and adaptation can presently contain, governments have pivoted toward a third pillar: addressing loss and damage – the harms that remain after defenses fail. [I] Levies are being debated as pragmatic instruments to mobilise resources for communities living with irreversible losses, both economic and non-economic. They are conceived to complement, not supplant, emissions cuts and adaptive measures, foregrounding climate justice for the most vulnerable. The politics are fraught, yet recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decisions recast support as cooperative facilitation rather than liability, opening space for credible, rules-based financing.

        Proposals span charges on international aviation and shipping, a tiny financial-transactions duty, and windfall taxes on fossil profits that would be hypothecated to a dedicated fund. Their salutary effect is to create a predictable, transnational revenue stream rather than sporadic charity. [II] Still, designs must avoid regressive burdens: border-adjusted formulas, polluter-pays logic, and carve-outs for essential mobility can cushion equity concerns while preserving incentives. Framed as cooperation, not culpability, levies can sit alongside insurance and humanitarian relief without pretending to monetise irreplaceable cultural or familial losses.

        Operationally, the fund countries launched at COP28 – hosted by the World Bank subject to strict conditions – must deliver quickly and fairly to those most exposed. Required safeguards include “firewalls” ensuring an independent board and secretariat, direct access for eligible countries, and universal eligibility under the Paris Agreement. Even if levies proliferate, they will not suffice unless governance ensures rapid, equitable disbursement. [III] In short, this mosaic of mechanisms – multilateral funds, the Santiago Network’s technical support, risk pools, concessional finance – only becomes credible when institutional plumbing turns pledges into payouts.

        Equally pivotal is narrative clarity. COP28 decisions reiterated that new funding arrangements for loss and damage are grounded in cooperation and facilitation and do not involve liability or compensation. [IV] That reassurance lowers diplomatic temperature while preserving a commitment to fairness: beneficiaries of carbon-intensive systems should help shoulder unavoidable harms. To honour non-economic losses – grief, identity, disrupted lifeways – levies are no panacea, yet they remain a tractable instrument within a just transition that refuses to abandon those already overrun.

(Adapted from weADAPT Knowledge Base, “What Is ‘Loss and Damage’ from climate change? 8 Key questions, answered”)

Question 31. The word salutary in paragraph 2 mostly means ______.

A. marginally curative                                B. profoundly beneficial

C. ostensibly punitive                                D. strikingly superficial