Observed and Potential Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Environment

Sorin Cheval, Cristian Mihai Adamescu, Teodoro Georgiadis, Mathew Herrnegger, Adrian Piticar and David R. Legates
Additional contact information
Sorin Cheval: “Henri Coandă” Air Force Academy, 500183 Brașov, Romania
Cristian Mihai Adamescu: Research Center for Systems Ecology and Sustainability, University of Bucharest, 050095 Bucharest, Romania
Teodoro Georgiadis: Institute for the BioEconomy-CNR, 40129 Bologna, Italy
Mathew Herrnegger: Institute for Hydrology and Water Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), 1190 Vienna, Austria
Adrian Piticar: “Henri Coandă” Air Force Academy, 500183 Brașov, Romania
David R. Legates: Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2541, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-25

Abstract: Various environmental factors influence the outbreak and spread of epidemic or even pandemic events which, in turn, may cause feedbacks on the environment. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic on 13 March 2020 and its rapid onset, spatial extent and complex consequences make it a once-in-a-century global disaster. Most countries responded by social distancing measures and severely diminished economic and other activities. Consequently, by the end of April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to numerous environmental impacts, both positive such as enhanced air and water quality in urban areas, and negative, such as shoreline pollution due to the disposal of sanitary consumables. This study presents an early overview of the observed and potential impacts of the COVID-19 on the environment. We argue that the effects of COVID-19 are determined mainly by anthropogenic factors which are becoming obvious as human activity diminishes across the planet, and the impacts on cities and public health will be continued in the coming years.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; global environment; pandemic; climate; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/11/4140/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/11/4140/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:11:p:4140-:d:369671

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().