Indirect impact of COVID-19 on environment

Worldwide spread of COVID-19 in a quite short time has brought a dramatic decrease in industrial activities, road traffic and tourism.
  

 Restricted human interaction with nature during this crisis time has appeared as a blessing for nature and environment. after the outbreak of COVID-19, 

environmental conditions including air quality and water quality in rivers are improving and wildlife is blooming. population, heavy traffics and polluting industries leading to high air quality index (AQI) values in all major cities. But after lockdown

quality of air has started to improve and all other environmental parameters such as water quality in rivers have started giving a positive sign towards restoring.

During past two decades, India has witnessed an expeditious industrial growth which has certainly improved the standard of living of its people and it is also evident from the rising vehicular fleet on roads. But we have paid a heavy cost for this development in terms of poisoning the air we breathe. As per press release of World Health Organization (2nd May 2018), around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine 1.particles in polluted air World Health Organization,

Study of air quality improvement using satellite images
Aerosols adversely affect human health by degrading the air quality which results to premature mortality through lung cancers and cardiopulmonary diseases (Partanen et al., 2018). MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) aboarded Terra and Aqua satellites (Sentinel-5P and AURA) from NASA creates satellite images of optical depth and size distribution of ambient aerosol over the globe on hourly basis. The Aerosol Optical depth (AOD) measures how light is absorbed or reflected by airborne particles. Hazy conditions show optical depth of 1 or above and optical depth of less than 0.1 over entire atmospheric vertical column is considered ‘clean’.

2.Impact on river quality

Articles and reports in dailies and other electronic media reveal the improvement in the quality of number of rivers of India including Ganga, Cauvery, Sutlej and Yamuna etc. The primary cause is lack of industrial effluents entering the rivers due to lockdown situation under this pandemic situation. The DO levels of river Ganga as per reports has gone above 8 ppm and BOD levels down below 3 ppm at Kanpur and Varanasi (SANDRP, 2020) which ranged around 6.5 ppm and 4 ppm in 2019 respectively (Pathak and Mishra, 2020) Many other factors have also contributed in enhancing the quality of the rivers like high snowfall now melting with summer, reduction of irrigation water demand, above average rainfall and also human born factors including reduction of religious and cultural activities like puja, bathing, cremations on the banks of the rivers.

3.Technology usage

The technologies adopted have certainly changed our mode of working and made us aware of how resilient and capable we are to handle such extreme situations. We are learning to be grateful to life and simple things they we usually ignore in routines. The importance of nature, mother earth and the natural resources have clearly been understood by humans in this pandemic situation. The world will have to face many long term and short terms effects of Covid-19. The patients who had developed Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) being Corona positive, will be at greater risk of long term health issues related to major organs like heart, lungs etc. People who have recovered from this disease may have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. Not only health but this pandemic situation will result in to a demand and supply-side crises which would affect entire business ecosystems and consumer behaviour. Every sector will try to develop buffers to deal with future catastrophic situations.

As all the types of social, economic, industrial and urbanization activity suddenly shut off, nature takes the advantages and showed improvement in the quality of air, cleaner rivers, less noise pollution

But electric vehicles are only as clean as the electricity that powers them. The recent improvements in air quality could be made permanent by replacing fossil fuel generation with renewable energy and other low-carbon sources. Reducing monthly NO₂ emissions from electricity generation by 10% would be the equivalent of turning off 500 coal power stations for a year.

Ironically, by shutting down swaths of the global economy, COVID-19 has helped expose another respiratory health crisis. The ensuing lockdowns have shown the improvements to air quality that are possible when emissions are reduced on a global scale.

The pandemic could show us how the future might look with less air pollution, or it may just indicate the scale of the challenge ahead. At the very least, it should challenge governments and businesses to consider how things can be done differently after the pandemic, to hold on to temporary improvements in air quality.