By Emma Blackwood

On March 9, Italy issued a nationwide lockdown in response to the recent coronavirus outbreak. The lockdown in central Wuhan, the first of China’s cities to issue a quarantine, began in mid-January. Since then, many countries have issued statements or temporary emergency measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, including the United States, South Korea, Japan, Belgium, Russia, and the United Kingdom. 

On March 23, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) officially announced all state schools will be closing for the remainder of the school year, among several other updates regarding COVID-19. While these precautions are necessary and widespread, it has forced many people to re-evaluate their work, income, and schooling situations. However, despite the many drawbacks of remaining indoors for most of the day, there have been some dramatic benefits of the widespread lack of human activity, outside of limiting the spread of the virus. 

The environmental impact from limiting human activity, especially in urban areas, has been fairly substantial, albeit misrepresented on social media. For example, images of the Venice canals, clear for the first time in over 60 years, spread across the internet within a matter of hours. While the water is more clear, the canals are likely not much cleaner than they were before. The amount of pollution that has been present in a city as populous as Venice for decades will require more time and/or manual effort to undo the damage caused by the open sewage system surrounding the city. 

However, these positive stories aren’t all misinformation. The environmental impacts we have been seeing, while likely short term, are improvements to the global environment. NASA has observed a clear plummet in nitrogen dioxide over China in just under two months. Additionally, the clearer water in Italy is a result of the river sediments being allowed to settle more. This isn’t actually cleaning the water, but it will allow for more photic activity which, if prolonged, can allow for plant growth in the water. While some of the tweets about swans and dolphins returning to the Venetian canals have proved to be false due to accidental misinformation, that doesn’t negate the evidence that limiting human activity can still have positive effects on the environment. 

If nothing else, it is possible that these updates will be able to to convince people that human activity is the cause of climate change. While this phenomenon is agreed on by the scientific community, there are still people who doubt human impact on natural ecosystems. This visible difference will hopefully be enough to change the minds of some people. Working from home and driving less every day obviously is not a viable option for many, but this will allow us to navigate how to alter human behavior going forward in ways that support the environment. 

At the very least, the current reductions in pollution from the worldwide quarantine measures could still have a positive outcome in and of itself. Professor Marshal Burke of Stanford University hypothesizes that the lives of roughly 77,000 Chinese citizens could be saved from the vast drop in carbon emissions. He also claims that the lives of around 5,000 children under the age of five have already been saved from the reductions. 

While these successes are progress, there are more long-term changes that still must be made in order to prevent worldwide climate-based catastrophes. These benefits from the quarantine are sure to continue for a little longer, but mostly they should serve as a framework for the average person to understand how minimizing our environmental impact can have such positive effects.

Featured image credit: Pixabay.