There is a visible silver lining around the grim dark cloud that has enveloped the world right now. As the world’s economic heavyweights lockdown and transportation within and across countries grinds to a halt, the air clears up, the rivers run clean and wildlife are seen roaming empty streets and markets.

Last week, the Central Environmental Authority put out a press statement on the condition of the Kelani river, surprisingly clean after the export processing zones upstream were shut and other sundry economic activities upriver were paused. The tone of surprise in the statement was a sad indication of the way we treat the river that provides drinking water to a large portion of Colombo and Gampaha districts. Water quality indicators measured downstream just before the river meets the sea at the northern edge of Colombo, turned favourable within a week of curfew-enforced shutdown. But industrial pollutants were not the sole reason- low turbidity and sediment loads in the water indicate the halting of other activities- road construction, house building, land clearing that cause upstream erosion.

Air quality over Sri Lanka has improved. While this is obvious in the satellite maps on air pollution, you don’t really need complicated technology to prove this. Just step outside and smell the air- or even better look at the sky on a clear night and notice how clear and bright the stars are.

Elsewhere in the world, as cities and factories shut down and humans confined to the ‘barracks’, nature surged. Within a month of Wuhan’s lockdown, air quality over China improved visibly. Similarly air pollution over Italy and Spain has shown dramatic improvement. The most drastic decline is in the nitrous oxides which are generated by transport and industrial activities and cause both climate change and air pollution. Ironically, the smog clears and many people find it easier to breathe, even as the coronavirus takes lives by attacking the respiratory system, and face masks become a mandatory part of our dress code. While China lost over 3500 lives at the peak of its COVID-19 crisis, Stanford University researchers have estimated that the reduction in pollution post lockdown of Hubei Province, may prevent 50,000 to 75,000 people from dying prematurely.

With the world’s biggest polluters frozen in lockdown, the earth is breathing a sigh a relief. The message is clear- nature can and should be allowed to recover, for our own wellbeing if not for its own sake. The issue remains however, how seriously will we take the message, especially when the world emerges from this frozen state and plays catch-up to save the remnants of this failed economic system?

There is no argument that 2020 did not begin auspiciously. But the roots of this year’s multiple crisis run deep into past misdeeds and demonstrate a terrible neglect of the earth and unconscionable exploitation of nature. Epidemics like COVID-19 reveal the fundamental tenets of the trade-off we consistently face: humans have unlimited needs, but the planet has limited capacity to satisfy them

The virus itself is attributed to human interferences such as deforestation, encroachment on animal habitats and biodiversity loss.  In recent years there have been many outbreaks -Ebola, bird flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Rift Valley fever, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Zika- from viruses that cross from animals to humans. It is not due to an explosion in animal populations and forests that have encroached upon our cities. There are nearly 8 billion of us, jostling for space with a shrinking wilderness, creating in the process, the necessary conditions for rare diseases to cross over to humans- harming both the health and wealth of earth’s burgeoning population.

The emergence of COVID-19 has underscored the mutually reinforcing relationship between people and nature.  We need to understand and appreciate the limits to which humans can push nature, before it turns against us.  Ultimately, lost ecological infrastructure such as forests, wetlands, lagoons and coastal mangroves and decline of services we receive from these ecosystems, will cause a decline in overall ‘wealth’ and well-being. This will be felt much more acutely in poorer regions and developing countries, where many people are still struggling to achieve basic wellbeing. Even though currently it’s the developed West that is struggling against COVID-19, the disease will scar poorer nations much more.  The disease itself may take lives and challenge under-resourced health infrastructure, but many more will be pushed to the margins of poverty, malnutrition and ill-health due to loss of jobs, markets, income.  Climate change and recurrent disasters, pest attacks, crop failures will exacerbate these vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, consumerist societies adjusting to sudden lockdowns and market closures, are rolling back some of environmentally-sound practices laboriously put in place in the last few years. Bans on single use plastics were sweeping across developed and near-developed countries, only to be hit hard by coronavirus lockdowns and health concerns, that required disposable face masks, throw-away packaging for groceries and loads of plastic food packaging! Images of single-use face masks and gloves floating in reefs and tons of disposable packaging clogging local waste dumps, portend a future crisis for nature.

While the world teeters on the brink of deep recession, nations will look to power their post-COVID-19 recovery engines with any possible fuel. The United States announced last week that instead of paving the recovery pathway with sustainability, its lawmakers were considering rolling back many existing environmental safeguards to support a resurgence of domestic production. China, Russia and the EU, and any other industrialized nation for that matter, will also be hard pressed to find a middle ground between sustainable use of natural capital and driving growth through the time tested but short-term strategy of production and consumerism. Some economists are indulgently calling it a V shaped recession, where the plunge will be followed by an aggressive resurgence. If this happens -and the likelihood is very high- then all this short-term positive impact will simply disappear in a puff of smoke, so to say.

There is a school of thought that welcomes this slowdown. That considers this spanner in the wheels of world economy and trade, something that will bring about positive change in the way we live and work; that will eventually lead to a less consumerist society restoring some balance between man and nature. But such philosophical long-term visions have to be weighed against the current suffering of the poor struggling through enforced lockdown.  The large majority working day to day, is unable to pay rent, secure food and seek medical attention from over-burdened health systems. Governments will be hard pressed to restore ‘normalcy’ of not-so-decent jobs and sub-par living conditions to the vast majority who oil the wheels of the capitalist system.

To see longer term opportunity for transformation, governments will have to be bolder and politicians will have to be truthful about short-term suffering. This is unlikely. But then again, this year we have seen the unlikely and unthinkable happening over and over…maybe 2020 is that year when we finally heed the message. Because, if we learn anything at all from this science fiction-like situation, it’s that nature is still a force to be reckoned with. If we choose to ignore it… there will be other messages. They will be exceedingly unpleasant.

(The writer is the former Team Leader and Policy Specialist, Environment and
Climate Change,  UNDP Sri Lanka)

 

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