COVID-19 Responses Have Increased Environmental Risks across the Globe

By George Stacey

Lockdowns have shut schools and a wide number of organizations. Restricted or minimal movement from industries, production lines, and other development sectors has limited the poisons present in toxic smoke to get away, thus improving air quality.

Travel bans have limited both domestic and international flights. According to the reports from the US Travel Association; canceled meetings, celebrations, shows, and other public occasions have diminished interest in the travel industry, Aircraft ridership has drooped, and air terminals are either closed or unfilled as they were in the 2001 result of the 9/11 assaults.

Aviation emissions which represented 2.4% of worldwide CO2 outflows in 2018, as per the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) have dropped very significantly.

These are the good things that happened. But do you know there are many environmental setbacks that have occurred during the course of the last 4-5 weeks?

China Suspends Environmental Regulations: The Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment has suspended its enforcement of some environmental laws during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Cao Liping, director of Ecological and Environmental Enforcement Bureau at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) said and Norvergence quotes: The environmental supervision should be adjusted in accordance with practical needs and social-economic situation. The purpose of environmental supervision is never about shutting firms and curbing production, but about encouraging firms to actively meet the environmental standards.

US Government Allows Companies to Break Pollution/Environmental Laws: The Trump administration said that it won’t anticipate consistency with the standard checking and detailing of contamination and won’t pursue punishments for disrupting these norms.

Polluters will have the option to overlook some ecological laws as long as they can guarantee somehow or another these infringement were brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the EPA said: This temporary policy is designed to provide enforcement discretion under the current, extraordinary conditions while ensuring facility operations continue to protect human health and the environment.

Brazil Decreases the Surveillance of Amazon Rainforest:  The government officers have reduced the monitoring of the Amazon rainforest that could rise in illegal loggers and wildfire.

Pollution from PPE and Other Medical Equipment: After the sudden increase in the demand for PPE kits, many industries started using plastic for gloves, gowns, masks, and testing kits. Also, they are not so much aware of the circular economy and sustainable solutions. Further, used PPE kits have been found dumped in open or public areas across the world that can lead to more problems both ecological and health-wise.

Conclusion

We believe that the new economic and industrial policies should be designed or builds on the sustainability factors and we together, as a word display the strong act of support and resilience.

Author Bio: George Stacey, who is an environmentalist, journalist, and writer at Norvergence LLC whose work stirred people up and helped launch a new age of environmental awareness across the globe especially in the United States of America. Apart from Norvergence LLC, she writes frequently for a wide variety of publications across the world, including Nation of Change, Age of Awareness, ESI Africa, Enviro Nigeria and many more.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 30,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

---

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking