Impact of Covid-19 Lockdown on our planet(Blessings in the disguise)
What our planet has gained as a result of the lockdown?
In a series of blogs, I am talking about some of the positive aspects related to corona lockdown. In the first one, I talked about the reduction in air pollution, which you can read here. During the second one, I wrote about Innovation and Invention, that how people had in the past and now could (have) utilize(d) their time at home to focus on pending tasks or to achieve something great. You can read more about that blog here. And here I will focus on the positive impact that this covid-19 lockdown had on our Earth, nature and our planet.
The mother nature has started to recover. The earth recovering have gone viral since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to stay indoor.
Humans at homes as changed the way the earth moves and for the better.
The world’s standstill resulted by the covid-19 enforced lockdown has reduced the noise and commotion as people were bound to stay at home and work from home, for most of them. Our nature and the environment ahs documented to reclaim its rightful space on our planet: reduced air pollution and clean water in the canals to mention just two examples.
It has proven to be the Time for repair and maintenance of the natural system
The Royal Observatory of Belgium data suggests that these background noise levels have reduced by as much as 33 percent
Every system in the world needs some maintenance after some period. Though it varies from object to object, but it is something which happens in a regular cycle.
Take for instance, mobile phones, they would work for some time but might need a new battery after some time. They need to run the latest operating system to offer us the latest functionalities while being compliant with the specification and security standards of the manufacturing entity. That’s why we have to upgrade their software after some regular intervals or whenever the new updates are available.
Similarly, we as humans do need some maintenace after some time, that is why we get flue etc after regular intervals (typically once every quarter). This flue helps to cleans our body and some of its significant parts which are in intensive use.
Scientists have problems in predicting earthquakes and volcanic activities in the past due to the noise created by our movement, traffic, noise, industry and factory noise, commercial machinery and even electricity power lines were potentially interfering with reading of the seismometers. (Seismometers are detectors used to pick up movements and activity on the earth, any geological disturbances such as volcano and earthquakes). It is expected that now with the cleaner and more accurate data, scientists can do tehir job much better as compared to the past.
While the global population continues to battle the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Planet Earth has been carrying on as usual… in fact, she has been healing. The worldwide slowdown in human activity has had a number of positive effects on the environment, including decreased air pollution due to less carbon-guzzling planes in the sky and less fuel-burning cars on the road.
We’ve rounded-up some positive environmental stories that show how the planet is reacting positively to the global lockdown…
Many Ways that plannet is healing, nature is happy and mother earth is rejoicing, thanks to global lockdown
- Air pollution
Air pollution levels in many countries have fallen including China, UK, Italy according to the new imagery released by the European Space Agency. Some cities have seen nitrogen dioxide (NO2) flling to levels by up to 60% on the same period last year.
To have a better, cleaner future for ourselves, our planet we should not rush to go back to where we were or even worse, therefore a fast return to the normal of the past must be avoided.
In India air quality index has improved in 90% of the total of 103 Cities. It is expected that Covid-19 dictated lockdown would result in biggest fall in carbon emissions since World War 2.
Although it is for all the wrong reasons, but it is nevertheless a small piece of good news and may help us to put us on track for reversing the damage that we have done to our planet.
2. Less Flights
Airplane travels adds up to 5% of global warming, the drops in flights which might be temporrary in nature has certainly given our planet the chance to breathe. The fastest source of growth in carbon emissions has been put on halt — the huge drop in number of commercial flights, with many airlines completely grounding their all fleet has really cleaned the skies, benefitting us with decreased air pollution levels.
3. Canals clearing up
Water sources has also been greatly cleaned up. Reportedly, Venice’s famous canals are the clearest they have been in 60 years, due to dropping tourist numbers and falling pollution levels. With less boats on the canals, water has become clear which was used to be murky and grey. This resulted in swans, fish and seabirds coming back to their home and living their life.
The busy streets are at rest, since the lockdown has been put in place, nature has had the time to breathe again. The water has become blue and clear again as it was many many years ago.
4. Animals reclaiming the land
Animals have finally got the chance to roam freely and explore the areas at their own. the “curious” animals are “wondering what’s going on like everybody else”. They wander around the empty towns making most of the deserted streets.
5. We started to reconnect with nature
The forced lockdown has made us pause, slow down, reflect and appreciate the little things that we have in our gardens, backyards and what our local walking paths have to offer. We have started to recognize the value of being free and able to walk outside, which we did not appreciate as such when we had it. Now, we are doing our best to do gardening, walking and making time to reconnect with the nature.
These all aspects teach us that we all need to reconsider what we see and what truly is essential for us, in our lives.
We have been forced to rethink what is neccessary or essential in our lives. The lockdown forced us and taught is how to do without the non-essentials. You can think about your home, office, grocery shopping everything where these points would have some greta impact. As we can do our work form home, we can and should only buy the essentials and not put everything in our home stocks just because we might need it sometime soon. If the business meetings could be conducted online then what’s the point in traveling for business?
Can we develop, live such a collective behaviour that could benefit our planet, people and economy? I am pretty sure, we can, we just need to think and act about it.
