The environmental impacts of COVID-19 were first seen from space. Then, as the pandemic and lockdown measures spread around the world, they could be felt as the air we breathe into our lungs became cleaner. The lockdowns contributed to a temporary fall in CO2 and nitrogen dioxide emissions of as much as 40%, greatly improving the air quality, reducing the risk of asthma, heart attack and lung cancer.
Between February and March, emissions from China dropped by 18%, 250m tonnes of CO2, the equivalent to half of the UK annual output. Rob Jackson, the Chair of Global Carbon Project notes “Air pollution has fallen in most areas. The virus provides a glimpse of just how quickly we could clean our air with renewables”. Despite the expected bounce back, the Earth has experienced its first fall in emissions since 2008; But at what cost?
“I refuse to celebrate a drop in emissions driven by tens of millions of people losing their jobs. We need a systemic change in our energy infrastructure or our emissions will roar back later”, says Rob Jackson. With over 250,000 dead and a fall in global GDP that will bring us back to levels in the 1990s, effectively wiping out a generation’s worth of economic growth, it is difficult to celebrate these short term environmental improvements with a clear conscience.
If governments intend to pump up the economy with the intention to go back to business as usual, any environmental gains will be short-lived. It remains to be seen if home isolation will affect the appetite for consumer goods.
What matters are the long-term political decisions, not the short-term effects of the virus. We can already see evidence of global elites using this crisis to push through unpopular environmental measures. The PiS government in my home country, Poland, has a long history of environmental negligence and, with the recent abortion vote in Parliament, showed that it is ready and willing to use this crisis in order to push through its unpopular agendas.
We must remain vigilant and prepare that PiS will want to use this pandemic crisis to slack on the EU’s Green New Deal, having already claimed that the pandemic will make it ‘even more difficult’ to achieve the EU’s environmental aims. Poland is the only EU country to have yet to commit to EU’s zero emissions by 2050 target as its economy is still heavily reliant on coal for its energy production, with half of all 237,000 of EU’s coal industry workers employed in Poland.
PiS’s anti-environmentalist agenda is not limited to the energy sector; In a number of late-night, hardly transparent votes held by the government in 2016, PiS passed laws that made it easier to cut down trees on private land without having to report it and made information about the environmental impacts of large industry investments in their neighbourhoods harder to obtain by citizens.
Perhaps the most blatant example of PiS’s disrespect of the natural world had been Jan Szyzko’s, Poland’s environment minister, decision to triple the logging limits of the Unesco-protected Białowieża forest in 2016, a decision deemed illegal by the European Court of Justice. It is thought that as much as 10,000 trees had fallen in one of Europe’s last parcels of primeval woodland. The forest carpeted Europe as far as 10,000 years ago and remains a safe haven for birds, wolves and 25% of the world bison population.
Today, Poland is facing the biggest drought the country has seen in over 50 years. The minister for marine economy warns that “in general rainfall levels are significantly lower than they have been in previous years.” It is the third year in a row that rainfall levels have been decreasing, causing concerns over possible raises in prices of fruits and vegetables.
Long-lasting droughts have lowered water levels in rivers, created localised water shortages, dried-out fields and significantly increased the risk of forest fires.
The recent fire in Biebrzanski National Park is a chilling reminder of the fragility of the natural world and the countries responsibility to do everything in its power to protect it. The fire, which destroyed over 55,000sqm of protected terrain is thought to have been caused by the flames getting out of hand during the illegal practice of setting fire to grasslands in order to clear land. The territories lost were habitat to a number of endangered species, marking a significant environmental tragedy.
It took 300 people, including firefighters, soldiers, forest guard services and local volunteers, 12 days to contain the flames, which began spreading on April 19th. And after the director of the national park appealed to the public for financial support, 3 million PLN (660,000 EUR) was raised in just a few days. It is bittersweet to see such strong civil response, contrasted with the relatively weak government one. PiS sets out to investigate and bring to justice the person(s) responsible for starting the fire, but has failed to adequately support the park in dealing with the damages or to acknowledge the greater drought problem in Poland, its policy of environmental negligence has contributed towards.
The fire in Biebrzanski National Park serves as a reminder that we cannot return to business as usual once the crisis ends, but that Poland’s economic recovery must be in line with long-term environmental sustainability.
World orders tend to change as a result of major crises and this pandemic is also an opportunity for political leaders to make decisions that will determine the Planet livable for the generations to come. Unfortunately, the chances that the PiS government, and many other governments, will take advantage of this opportunity look bleak. Without active political will, little will change, as is evident in Wuhan, China where emissions have been steadily rising since lockdown measures were eased in March.
With slow-downs in the EU’s legislative activity related to the Green New Deal, populists may use the coronavirus crisis to excuse its inadequate commitment to reaching EU’s zero emissions by 2050 as well as its wider failure to conduct politics that prioritises sustainability over political point-scoring. It is crucial that citizens remain vocal about the type of future they want for their children and many more generations to come.
Milosz Hodun, PhD.
Member of Liberal International’s Climate Justice Committee. International officer of Projekt: Polska Association and international advisor at Nowoczesna, Polish liberal party. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the European Liberal Forum, think tank of the ALDE Party, a part-time teacher at Reykjavik University School of Law and former negotiations tracker at UNFCCC events.
