Covid & the Environment - Part 2: The Consequences
Is nature “recovering” with half of humanity under lockdown?
This is the second part of three, exploring the link between the Covid-19 pandemic and the environment.
Part 1 — The origins of Covid-19: a tale of biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction
Part 2 — The consequences of the pandemic on the environment
Part 3 — Connecting the dots: the aftermath of the pandemic will be what we make it
With half the world confined, greenhouse-gas emissions are dropping
The data so far indicates that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 could see the first sharp decline in global greenhouse-gas emissions since the 2008 recession. Estimations change weekly, but this drop could be as “low” as 4 and as high as 10%, in either case easily breaking the record of WWII, according to an in-depth analysis by Carbon Brief. Is the pandemic a good thing for the environment, and is 2020 the year emissions finally peak before their steady decrease?
To slow the spread of the disease, borders are being closed, flights cancelled, and many countries and regions had to enter a state of lockdown. As many as 3.9 billion people, over half the world population, are under some form of lockdown or curfew at the time this article is being written. The severity and modalities of lockdown differ across regions, especially in whether people are allowed some amount of personal travel, and in how businesses and factories are treated by the government: which are deemed essential and must keep operating, which are asked to close down, how well is the rule enforced. Overall, lockdowns are associated with a decrease in personal and work-related transport, a drop in cargo and fret transport, and reduced industrial activity. More than 1.1 million flights have been cancelled globally up to the end of June. The impressive reductions observed in nitrogen dioxide, a proxy for fossil fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions, are discussed region by region in this article, and can even be explored in an interactive map.
Here is a video of the emissions over China during the lockdown, processed by a satellite of the European Space Agency:
Pollution levels are dropping, and some urban areas experience “nature returning”
The current pause of most economic human activity seems so far to have, overall, a direct positive impact on the environment in terms of pollution. To quote an overview from the BBC on the situation, as of March, 26th 2020:
As industries, transport networks and businesses have closed down, it has brought a sudden drop in carbon emissions. Compared with this time last year, levels of [carbon monoxide] pollution in New York have reduced by nearly 50% because of measures to contain the virus.
In China, [CO₂] emissions fell 25% at the start of the year as people were instructed to stay at home, factories shuttered and coal use fell by 40% at China’s six largest power plants since the last quarter of 2019. The proportion of days with “good quality air” was up 11.4% compared with the same time last year in 337 cities across China, according to its Ministry of Ecology and Environment. In Europe, satellite images show nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions fading away over northern Italy. A similar story is playing out in Spain and the UK.
As impressive as those abstract numbers are, in many parts of the world people can directly experience the drop in pollution — albeit, from their windows. And so can other animals. For instance:
- Confinement cleared the fog of some heavily polluted cities, and made the air more breathable. Air pollution is responsible for millions of early deaths each year worldwide, and a reduction in air pollution has measurable health benefits within only a few weeks (Schraufnagel et al., 2019)
- Noise pollution normally caused by cars and planes is a major source of stress, ill-health and premature deaths in humans as well as other animals, be they mollusks, insects, mammals, amphibians… (Kunc & Schmidt, 2019). The sudden quiet will therefore be a general respite. As car noise gives way to silence in cities, birdsong can easily be heard again. This improved communication between animals (Grade & Sieving, 2016) can also be solace to their human neighbours, as birdsong is commonly experienced as a restorative sound by people (Ratcliffe et al., 2013)
- As the rumbling of cars and trains recedes, so does background seismic noise travelling though the ground, which is perceived both by seismologists and other creatures around the world
- The cancelling of cruises and the massive reduction in global shipping is also causing the seas to grow quieter. This will be a relief for many marine species, including most fish and whales, for whom constant anthropogenic noise is a major source of stress (Weilgart, 2018). The underwater noise reduction in the days following the 9/11 attacks in the US caused a rapid and measurable decrease in levels of stress hormones in baleen whales (Rolland et al., 2012), and this is expected to happen again on a much larger scale
- Land animals are offered a respite in the usual high death toll from road traffic (in particular, a drop in traffic in March-April is excellent news for Amphibians of the Northern temperate region, which normally die by the thousands in their spring migration (Brzeziński et al., 2012).
Aside from what people experience themselves in their daily lives, some emotionally appealing images of “nature flourishing again” have become viral over the internet, like those of the canals of Venice becoming clear like crystal, fish and swans returned, dolphins swimming by. Unfortunately, elements of this particular observation are presented in a misleading way, but observations of wildlife in or near urban areas have indeed increased. Often, the animals spotted were already either present or occasional visitors before the lockdown, as urban biodiversity is often underestimated by city-dwellers (Soulsbury & White, 2015). Reduced human activity is now making the animals both more conspicuous to us, and bolder.
Unfortunately, the benefits animals might get from one season of relief will quickly disappear as the various forms of human pollution and disturbance they are constantly exposed to return. Ironically, while the Covid-19 pandemic is providing a natural experiment of an exceptional scale to study the response of wildlife to a drop in human activity, research in real time is sometimes complicated by lockdown rules which confine many behavioural ecologists at home.
As the economic consequences of the crisis worsen, so will poaching
Lockdowns can also have negative consequences on the environment. One instance is by impairing the work of fire suppression teams. Another one, is by hitting anti-poaching teams. Unfortunately, the view that wildlife will overall be less, and not more, disturbed, can be held only from the minority world, i.e. the wealthiest countries.
Poaching worldwide will rise during the pandemic. Because tourism stopped overnight, human presence is reduced in natural parks, leaving a clear field for poachers, and especially for the organized crime syndicates behind most traffic around the world. On top of that, the collapse of revenues from the tourist industry is endangering the jobs of rangers, park staff, and other local workers. As jobs vanish in many sectors, city folks often return to their home village for the lockdown. There, they and some locals alike are sometimes forced to turn to illegal wildlife hunting to sustain themselves, be it for their own consumption, to sell on the local black market, or in association with criminal networks. Poverty is a well-known correlate of illegal wildlife hunting (Duffy et al., 2015) and a rise in poaching has been observed in the wake of economic crises (for a study in Portugal after the 2008 financial crisis, see Ballesteros & Rodríguez-Rodríguez, 2018).
It is still too early to quantify these negative consequences of the lockdown on wildlife, but they could seriously endanger some species whose preservation depends on constant conservation efforts, and the economic security of neighbouring human populations.
Will the environmental benefits of the pandemic last?
Overall, the direct strictly environmental benefits of the pandemic are real, but the question is whether any of those benefits, accrued only over a short period of a few months, really make a difference in the big picture, and whether their impact will be long-lasting.
The same BBC article as quoted above compares the greenhouse-gas emission figures with the 2008 financial crisis:
The reduction in emissions then was largely due to reduced industrial activity, which contributes carbon emissions on a comparable scale to transport. Combined emissions from industrial processes, manufacturing and construction make up 18.4% of global anthropogenic emissions. The financial crash of 2008–09 led to an overall dip in emissions of 1.3%. But this quickly rebounded by 2010 as the economy recovered, leading to an all-time high.
“There are hints that coronavirus will act the same way,” says Julia Pongrat, [a professor for physical geography and land use systems at the University of Munich]. “For example, the demand for oil products, steel and other metals has fallen more than other outputs. But there are record-high stockpiles, so production will quickly pick up.”
A lot of the emissions being avoided at the moment are from transport. Most of it is therefore avoided for ever (you won’t commute twice as much when you return to your work site), while some will simply have been delayed (as some trips get postponed), and some might be overcompensated (such as fret, in case of an economic rebound and consumption boom).
Sure, any single ton of CO₂ prevented from reaching the atmosphere can be taken as good news. As was put by Dr. Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA, “climate change isn’t a cliff we fall off — it’s a slope we slide down”. Even though recent research shows this slope will likely be broken down into a series of abrupt ecosystem collapses (Trisos et al., 2020), and catastrophic thresholds akin to a deadly cliff can indeed be crossed (Steffen et al., 2018), this quotes is meant to highlight the importance of every single ton of CO₂ prevented from being released into the atmosphere. But even the spectacular decrease in emissions caused by the pandemic will be negligible compared to the quantities already accumulated in the atmosphere, if the world returns to “business as usual” in the aftermath. And after each economic crisis so far, CO₂ emissions have kept shooting up (Peters et al. 2011).
The largest impact of Covid-19 on the environment will not be the direct effect on pollution we are seeing now
Considering the fact that greenhouse-gas emissions have been on a steady rise year after year, the unprecedented drop of emissions we are seeing, estimated at around 5%, simply means we temporarily returned to the level of emissions of a few years back. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, and it is therefore cumulative emissions that matter. The pandemic did not remove carbon from the atmosphere, it just made us add a little bit less of it this year than we would have otherwise — at the cost of the death of many people’s loved ones, and the confinement of billions.
Moreover, global emissions need to fall by more than 6% every single year this decade in order to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and thereby stand a two-in-three chance to limit warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, as per the IPCC calculations.
The largest environmental impact of the pandemic will therefore not be direct but indirect, from the way policies change –or not– in its wake. This won’t be a consequence of physics or biology, predictable and unavoidable, this will be the result of the choices we make and the actions we take, regarding our own lives of course, but mainly regarding the way we fight for the right policies to be born out of the crisis. However, the direct environmental improvements caused by the pandemic, be they experienced first hands by people or merely fantasized, should not be underestimated in terms of their potential effects on human imagination. A key battle in the climate and ecological fight is to mobilize people’s imagination, making the prospect of a different world desirable and not threatening, making necessary lifestyle changes appealing and not punitive.
Using events caused by a pandemic in an environmental narrative is a double-edged sword. It must be used carefully: the drop in pollution we experience will be associated with collective trauma and loss, and the lifestyle changes which partly bring about this drop in pollution are not chosen but imposed, undemocratically, at breakneck speed, with a heavy toll in terms of financial and mental stability for many people. Lessons must certainly be learned about how to deal with the environmental crisis, and about how rapid, large-scale policy deployment that was deemed impossible suddenly became feasible. But the silver linings, if any, must be highlighted with compassion — and above all, it is rather up to us to paint those silver linings.
Find out more in Part 1& 3:
Part 1— The origins of Covid-19: a tale of biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction
Part 3 — Connecting the dots: the aftermath of the pandemic will be what we make it
To be continued!
NB: should you find any inaccuracy in this piece, or have comments, please write to atilquin@ethz.ch!
