Did the covid-19 pandemic help us reach our enviromental goals

Earth Science

Photograph: Kyle Chiu

During the height of the Covid 19 pandemic when we were stuck at home during the lockdowns, we all started to desperately search for any positives which may arise from the events. One of the most common was the belief that being ‘locked down’ may be beneficial for the environment and may slow the effects of climate change. This makes logical sense. It is easy to directly link any discussion about the environment back to carbon emissions, and as we saw the demand for high emission industries such as transport start to decrease, it became easy to assume total global emissions must have decreased too. However, if we analyse the environmental impacts across a range of timescales whilst also considering factors such as biodiversity, the one positive of the pandemic we may have hoped for might not be true.

In the short term, the pandemic did decrease carbon emissions as well as create other environmental benefits such as decreased human interference within natural habitats. This was the case in both rural and urban environments, as ecologists started to note that a decrease in recreational tourism allowed many ecosystems to recover. The pandemic also helped protect biodiversity by decreasing the rates of poaching. This was seen in Tanzania where the rates of rhino poaching decreased as a result of stronger border controls and supply chain disruption.

In relation to the drop in carbon emissions, the UN agency for civil aviation confirmed that international air traffic dropped by 60% during 2020. A similar drop could also be seen in road traffic with a 70% decrease in the UK. It must also be noted that transportation was not the only high emission sector which saw a decrease, as the lockdowns caused industrial activity in China to fall by 18%, between early February and mid-March.

However, despite the environmental optimism during the early stages of the pandemic, there was one growing challenge that we all noticed: litter. It was estimated that during the height of the pandemic, the demand for masks exceeded 129 billion per month and thus the volume of waste and litter due to PPE also increased. The main way which this has impacted wildlife is through entanglement as many species become caught up and trapped in the waste. A study titled “Tracking the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic-related debris on wildlife using digital platforms” estimates that of the entanglements which occur 83% affect bird species, 11% mammals, 3.5% invertebrates and 2% fish. The large spatial area which plastic pollution has the ability to impact has also accelerated the problem. For example, PPE entering rivers and moving within ocean currents has resulted in 55.1% of waste washing up on Kenyan beaches to be a pandemic related item. The UN has recognised the significance of this issue by declaring that plastic pollution is a global crisis which must be solved in order to meet the goals around sustainable economic growth in the future.

One of the largest consequences of the pandemic on the environment is the rise in carbon emissions which has arisen in order to power economic recovery. Many economists and earth scientists predicted that this would be the case, as they believe the economic recession and resulting stimulus packages would mirror those which were proposed after the 2008 recession. The stimulus packages introduced in 2008-2009 were known for driving an increase in carbon emissions as the demand for energy intensive heavy industry increased in-order to restart the economy. For example, global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production grew by 5.9% in 2010. Many scientists predicted that the environmental impact following the 2020 pandemic may be even worse than 2008, as government spending does not only need to focus on economic recovery but also on the ongoing public health emergency. These concerns led to an investigation from Nature Magazine which highlighted that of the $14tn used within stimulus packages of G20 countries, only 6% has been allocated to areas which may decrease carbon emissions.

However, despite these net negative statistics there is variation within the G20 surrounding their climate focused ambitions. For example, the European Union and South Korea are currently leading the way, with 30% of their Covid-19 stimulus packages incorporating emission reducing measures. France was particularly successful as Air France has stopped all domestic flights and the government has allocated $66 million to subsidise bicycle parking and repairs in order to promote green transportation. This contrasts to India which has dedicated $14 billion to stabilising its coal industry, modernising mining infrastructure, attracting private sector investment and reducing coal prices.

The difficulty that comes with researching Covid is the high levels of uncertainty that comes with predicting long term effects. This is due to the sheer volume of cultural and social variables which shifted during the course of the pandemic. The largest example is the increased infrastructure available to enable us to work from home. The Pew Research Centre conducted a survey which highlights that in the United States, 35% of workers with jobs that can be done remotely are doing so. The survey also highlights the growth of ‘Hybrid Schedules’ with 41% of workers now splitting their time between working at home and in the office. The main hope is that with a larger proportion of the population working remotely, the level of emissions from transport industries will fall as fewer people commute both nationally and internationally for work. Therefore, this acts as an example of how social norms created by the pandemic, may result in a secondary net benefit for the environment.

Despite lots of scientific research coming to the consensus that the pandemic has had a net negative impact on the environment, a factor which cannot accurately be incorporated and will no doubt help future environmental targets is increased global cooperation. During the pandemic, cooperation became a necessity when controlling its spread, designing cures and distributing the vaccine. As a result, the pandemic highlights how global scientific focus and funding can shift in light of an emergency. This means that in the future, when the effects of environmental disasters increase in their extremity, governments around the world may rapidly increase funding into effective mitigation and adaptation strategies.

However, unlike the pandemic, the effects of climate change vary between different climatic regions and thus impacts the level of immediacy and pressure governments feel to establish new measures. Unfortunately, this is only made worse as the countries with the greatest level of economic development and diplomatic power tend to not only be the largest contributors to climate change but are also impacted the least. Therefore, variation between both the physical impacts of climate change and governmental ambition to put climate action above economic development, may make it difficult for global cooperation to be successful in the future.