COVID-19 has been the most dreadful pandemic the world has faced till date. This virus has taken away millions of lives from the whole world and left its footprint as poverty in many parts of the world. This pandemic has led to the huge disaster in the economy of many countries and also the people. Many people have been badly affected by the lockdown which had been a compulsion in many countries to control the spread of Corona virus. News of suicides, domestic violence, sexual abuse and even assaults of women, theft and robbery, clashes between the police and people, etc. during the lockdown period have made our minds depressed and pissed off. Besides these, the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought many impacts on the environment.
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Due to the lockdown, when nearly the whole world was locked and the people were bound to stay inside their homes, there weren’t running vehicles in the street and highways, airplanes flying in the sky, most of the factories had been closed and the other human activities had also drastically reduced. This had brought some positive impacts on the environment like reduction in the air pollution and water pollution. The climate and atmosphere seemed to be cleaner and pleasant than before. Research showed that due to lockdowns and other measures, there was a good amount of reduction in the carbon and nitrogen oxides emissions, which was a positive change for the environment. Due to the clean and clear air around, Mt. Everest of Nepal could also be observed from the Kathmandu valley even though it is 200 km away, which was for the first time in so many years. The increase in water quality was observed in many places and due to less demand of fish, the fish biomass was also found to be significantly increased in the water resources. The industrial and domestic wastes seem to have reduced significantly during the lockdowns. In the sea coasts, sea turtles were observed to be laying their eggs on the beaches due to less human interference which was merely seen prior to the pandemic. When all the people were locked inside their homes, the wild animals like monkeys, deer, leopard, etc. were spotted to be freely roaming around outside the forests and near the human settlements. It seems that the animals enjoyed roaming around the nature during the lockdown as never as before. This may have made the humans realize a bit that the earth is not only their home but also the common habitat for all the wildlife too and how much the humans have been creating disturbance for other creatures on the planet. The road kills/ accidents of the wild animals was found to be decreased by half in the United States because of the lockdown and travel restrictions. The COVID-19 or coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) has been found to be originated from the Huanan seafood market situated in Wuhan of China at the end of December 2019 and believed to be transmitted from various potential hosts like bats and pangolin. This has made the government to strictly impose restriction on killing, eating as well as trade of these species, which has been a great relief to these animal populations. Studies have reported that the mean global high-frequency seismic noise was reduced by half due to the reduced use of transportations, lower industrial as well as economic activity caused by the lockdown. This helps in the better monitoring and detection of natural seismic sources like earthquakes and volcanoes. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many tourist destinations like cultural heritages and naturally beautiful destinations also seem to be less impacted by the human activity, as a whole resulting on the restoration of the ecological system.
Another benefit we must say is, the people started adopting the policy of “Work from Home” and using different virtual platforms for the purpose of teaching and learning, meetings, seminars, symposiums and national/ international conferences. This not only saved time but also the carbon emissions caused by the transportations usage by the people. The adopted measures like “social distancing”, “use of mask and sanitizers” not only reduced the risk of virus transmission but also promoted a good culture. Staying in homes with own families made the people realize the love and care for each other and the responsibilities towards the family. Not only that, people also learned some of the ways to manage the resources at home, techniques of segregation of waste and waste management and spared some of their time for roof top gardening during their stay at home. Roof top gardening not only helps the people to be productive and save their money but also help to maintain greenery in the city or urban areas and minimize air pollution. Similarly, people started learning DIY techniques to reuse and recycle the solid wastes from home. Researchers and climate activists had always been recommending reduced economic activities to reduce global warming and the climate change issues and help the environment recover from excessive exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation as well as to maintain the carrying capacity of the earth. The environmental scientists and officials have also recommended biodiversity conservation as a means of recovering from COVID 19 pandemic.
Having said, the few positive impacts brought by the lockdown imposed due to COVID-19 pandemic, the negative impacts on the environment following the COVID-19 pandemic have been discussed below in reference to the cases of different countries:
Effect on wildlife: One might think that the COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic which has severely disrupted the human’s lifestyle and state of physical, social and mental wellbeing, but has helped the animals freely enjoy the nature when the human beings have been locked inside their homes. The condition being similar to a zoo, but the case being reverse where the animals are out and the humans are locked in. But, the situation may not be the same as we think because due to the pandemic and imposed lockdown, the illegal hunting and poaching has been found to be increased in many parts of the world, especially in the case of Africa. Due to the loss of income generation opportunities, the people and even the poachers might option for killing the animals for obtaining the valuable products like horn, ivory, skin, etc. This may lead to another bigger issue in the coming future more serious than the COVID-19.
Effect on the forest ecosystem: During the ongoing pandemic, illegal advantages were also taken like the massive deforestation of the Amazon rainforest of Brazil by more than half. The people having no source of income currently have to heavily depend upon the resources from the forest for living, which may lead to the overexploitation of the forest resources.
Effect on environmental diplomacy efforts: It includes the commitment of the government or organization to the laws, regulations and other policies regarding the environmental issues like air and water pollution, waste management and management of natural resources, wildlife and endangered species. The United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held on 2020 was postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic, which impacted the environmental policy as well as the climate diplomacy as the Conference importantly aimed to submit the nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement. The enforcement of some environmental protections laws were suspended by the United States Trump administration which may create the risk of violation of environmental laws by the polluters in the name of the pandemic. There is a fear that the rise of the global economy to overcome the economic losses caused due to the pandemic can add up the excessive extra greenhouse production.
Effect on the atmosphere: Though the air quality somehow improved during the lockdowns imposed in various countries, but it is not an effective and a sustainable solution. The shocking part is that concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was recorded the highest ever in human history on May, 2020. The economic losses caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic may prevent or delay in the investment in green energy which is a big loss to the environment in itself. The pandemic itself has been regarded as the picture of ecological imbalance. Thus, the reduction of the greenhouse gases emission in the atmosphere is only possible if the human beings bring positive change in their behavior, use environment-friendly technologies and follow the principle of sustainable development.
Effect on the ecosystem: For the prevention of COVID-19 transmission, face masks, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), hand gloves, sanitizers, disinfectants, etc. should be used. Due the unmanaged disposal of the huge amount of the infectious wastes from the hospitals and the households, it has been creating negative impacts on the environment.
However, we should find the solutions to the problems in this hard time when the whole world is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Following are some of the important measures that should be applied to minimize the negative impacts:
It has been reported that the Corona virus can exist for one day on cardboards, woods and up to 3 days on plastics and stainless steel. Therefore, medical wastes generated from the hospitals like masks, gloves, used tissue papers, bandages, needles, syringes, swab collecting materials, etc. should be managed properly in order to prevent infection as well as environmental pollution.
Nowadays, household wastes consists of increased number of PPE made from plastics, masks, plastic bottles of sanitizers and disinfectants, face masks and gloves, which is highly increasing the production of these plastic materials (pollutants) as well as the number of trash. Due to lack of knowledge about waste management, people haphazardly dump these infectious wastes in open places and even near the water resources, harming the environment. Therefore, awareness of the local people regarding the proper management, segregation, handling and disposal of the house hold wastes along with the infectious wastes should be done through different social media and awareness campaigns as well as implemented too.
Waste water treatment and disinfection process should be more focused in those areas of the countries where the municipal waste water is transferred into the rivers and water bodies without treatment as the Corona virus was even detected in the faeces of the Corona virus infected patients as well as the drainage/municipal waste water in many countries.
Sustainable urbanization, industrialization and modernization has been important for the benefit of the environment in today’s context as the global economy must be uplifted by doing development on the one hand whereas the environment also should be conserved on the other hand in order to prevent the future serious complications.
In order to reduce the greenhouse gases emissions, environment friendly vehicles should be used, use of bicycles should be promoted and sharing of public vehicle systematically should be encouraged rather than using private cars.
In order to maintain the air quality like that of the pandemic time on the one hand and also to maintain the daily needs and global economic growth on the other hand, the use of renewable energy resources like solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectricity, geothermal heat, etc. should be highly promoted whereas the use of the fossil fuels like coal, petroleum products, etc. should be highly discouraged.
Ecotourism should be promoted to strongly and sustainably support the livelihoods, cultural as well as biodiversity preservation.
International authorities as well as the global community should contribute united efforts to meet the sustainable environmental goals, and protection of biological diversity and ecosystems all over the world.
It is said that in order to change the world, we have to start from ourselves. So, we should switch to sustainable behaviors like less use of plastics, use of bicycles and adopt walking behavior for short distances, use of organic food (if possible from own roof top garden), recycle the solid waste and make compost out of the organic waste due to which the waste will be regarded as wealth in itself, it will not only make us but also our environment happy.