Indirect implications of COVID-19 towards sustainable environment: An investigation in Indian context

Abstract

Efficacious transmittal of COVID-19 has compelled numerous countries worldwide to embrace temporary yet dramatic measures such as locking down entire cities, restricting all forms of transportation, imposing lockdowns, maintaining social distancing etc. These actions have considerably enhanced the quality of ambient air and water. India, being a densely populated country, imposed a strict nationwide lockdown mandate since the last week of March 2020. This paper discusses the effects of COVID-19 restrictions on several aspects of environment broadly in Indian scenario. The forward course of action in the present and probable scenarios has also been addressed. As the disease spread is still underway, lockdown restrictions yet to be lifted and the availability of metadata hitherto being restrictive, firm deductions and explications could not be made. This case study i.e. observing the effects of lockdown, is a unique opportunity to understand how the environment reacts to sharp reductions in anthropogenic activity.

Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability

“…It is found that, among the 36 real-time monitoring stations of river Ganga, water from 27 stations met the permissible limit (Singhal and Matto, 2020). This improvement of water quality at Haridwar and Rishikesh was ascribed to the sudden drop of the number of visitors and 500% reduction of sewage and industrial effluents (Singhal and Matto, 2020;Somani et al, 2020). According to the real-time water quality monitoring data of the Uttarakhand Pollution Control Board (UPCB, 2020) of India, physicochemical parameters i.e, pH (7.4-7.8), dissolved oxygen (DO) (9.4-10.6 mg/L), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) (0.6-1.2 mg/L) and total coliform (40-90 MPN/100 mL) of the river Ganga was found within the surface water quality standard of India.…”

“…Since the outbreak of COVID-19, medical waste generation is increased globally, which is a major threat to public health and environment. For sample collection of the suspected COVID-19 patients, diagnosis, treatment of huge number of patients, and disinfection purpose lots of infectious and biomedical wastes are generated from hospitals (Somani et al, 2020;Zambrano-Monserrate et al, 2020). For instance, Wuhan in China produced more than 240 metric tons of medical wastes every day during the time of the outbreak (Saadat et al, 2020), which is almost 190 m tonnes higher than the normal time (Zambrano-Monserrate et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, Wuhan in China produced more than 240 metric tons of medical wastes every day during the time of the outbreak (Saadat et al, 2020), which is almost 190 m tonnes higher than the normal time (Zambrano-Monserrate et al, 2020). Again, in the city of Ahmedabad of India, the amount of medical waste generation is increased from 550-600 kg/day to around 1000 kg/day at the time of the first phase of lockdown (Somani et al, 2020). Around 206 m tonnes of medical waste are generated per day in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh because of COVID-19 (Rahman et al, 2020).…”

“…Figure 3 illustrates global examples of the country wise number of people placed on enforced lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is found that India restricted the movement of the largest number of people (approximately 1.3 billion) as a preventive measure of COVID-19, which started from March 24, 2020 (Somani et al, 2020). Except emergency services (e.g., medical, fire, police, food supply etc.…”

“…As of April 7, 2020, World Economic Forum reported, nearly 3 billion people are faced with some form of lockdown globally, and movement is being restricted by respective governments to control the COVID-19 infection (WEF, 2020). Overall, the pandemic has caused huge global socio-economic disruption, which directly or indirectly affected the environment like improvement of air and water quality, reduction of noise and restoration of ecology (Chakraborty and Maity, 2020;Somani et al, 2020;Saadat et al, 2020). Moreover, the increased use of personal protective equipment (PPE) (e.g., face mask, hand gloves, gowns, goggles, face shield etc.…”