The Green Guide: conservation during Covid-19

A surprising beneficiary of the pandemic: Planet Earth

Amidst all the doom and gloom, the pandemic has had somewhat of a positive impact on marine life, including the baleen whale (pictured). Source: amanda panda on Unsplash.

Covid-19. What started off as a zoonotic disease in the heart of a wet market has now managed to rampantly spread all across the world. This pandemic has had an unprecedented impact, from stealing away more than a million lives to causing economies to come to a stand-still. However, amidst all of this doom and gloom, there does exist a silver lining; the environment has finally gotten the opportunity to revive. Now, it is our responsibility to ensure that this trend continues in the long term.

While the implementation of lockdowns and quarantine have made all of us forget what the outside world really looks like, it has allowed for improvements in air quality. Around the world, levels of harmful pollutants like NO2 (nitrogen dioxide), CO (carbon monoxide), SO2 (sulfur dioxide) and PM2.5 (small particulate matter) have plummeted. For example, London and Edinburgh have experienced a 60 per cent drop in NO2 levels compared to March and April of last year. This reduction in air pollution caused by the industrial shutdowns has had a significant positive impact on health, having potentially saved between 53,000 to 77,000 lives in China alone. Even more conservative estimates would put the number of lives saved at roughly 20 times the number of deaths caused directly by the virus. Besides this, the slowing down of economic activities has also driven down greenhouse gas emissions. An analysis by Carbon Brief indicated that coronavirus is set to cause the largest ever annual fall in carbon dioxide emissions. 

When it comes to restoring the natural world, the pandemic has been a great helping hand. The sky in India, once carpeted with a thick layer of smoke, is now pristine and boasts views of the Himalayas. The virus has also facilitated the much-needed cleaning of beaches, which has in turn positively affected marine life. To give just one example, researchers found that fewer ships in the waters along the U.S. and Canadian coast correlated with lower stress hormones in baleen whale. This is mainly due to the imposition of travel bans, which drastically reduced the number of tourists visiting beaches. Likewise, noise levels have fallen significantly in most countries, attributed to the decrease in the use of private and public transportation, as well as commercial activities.

Further promising news of the pandemic is that despite the initial slowdown, green bond insurance is set for a record this year. Green bonds are typically fixed-income instruments designed specifically to support climate-related or environmental projects. An estimate of over $157 billion has already been invested this year and this figure continues to grow. Aside from this, many governments have included “green” recovery measures in their crisis recovery packages through grants, loans and tax reliefs directed towards green transport, circular economy and clean energy research, development and deployment. Preliminary OECD estimates suggest these packages amounts to about $312 billion. They also include new funding and programmes to create jobs and stimulate economic activity through ecosystem restoration, control of invasive alien species and forest conservation. Sweden has already committed to financially supporting “green job” creation as an important measure to reduce unemployment within a green stimulus package.

Cleaner air quality, healthier water, effective waste managements and enhanced biodiversity protection are just some of the potential benefits that the post-pandemic world has to offer.  These factors do not only reduce the vulnerability of communities to future pandemics, but also have the potential to boost economic activity, create jobs and reduce inequalities. Now it is up to us to take this opportunity to save our environment, for the generations to come.

This article is published as part of the the Green Guide series, written by Pi Media columnist Nishika Jain.