Abstract
In Spring 2020, COVID-19 led to an unprecedented halt in public and economic life across the globe. In an otherwise tragic time, this provides a unique natural experiment to investigate the environmental impact of such a (temporary) ‘de-globalization’. Here, we estimate the medium-run impact of a battery of COVID-19 related lockdown measures on air quality across 162 countries, going beyond the existing short-run estimates from a limited number of countries. In doing so, we leverage a new dataset categorizing lockdown measures and tracking their implementation and release, extending to 31 August 2020. We find that domestic and international lockdown measures overall led to a decline in PM2.5 pollution by 45% and 35%, respectively. This substantial impact persists in the medium-run, even as lockdowns are lifted, there is, however, substantial heterogeneity across different types of lockdown measures, different countries, and different sources of pollution. We show that some country trajectories are much more appealing (with fewer COVID-19 casualties, less economic downturn and bigger pollution reductions) than others. Our results have important policy implications and highlight the potential to ‘build back better’ a sustainable economy where pollution can be curbed in a less economically costly way than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
Major pandemics do bring great harm and suffering to humanity, and allow for opportunities in innovation and to ‘build back better’
Estimation strategy Studying the impact of lockdown measures on air quality is statistically challenging, because of related variables affecting both
We control for the varied timing of lockdown release as well as the proportion of bordering countries having implemented any type of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on a given day
Summary
Major pandemics do bring great harm and suffering to humanity, and allow for opportunities in innovation and to ‘build back better’. If the plague spurred on a series of medical and organizational innovations, such as quarantines and modern public administrations, the current COVID-19 pandemic has championed remote working, various dimensions of digitalization, and virtual meetings. Air pollution is among the most severe environmental problems. It causes several million deaths every year, disproportionately affecting the global poor [26]. Pollution is directly related to economic activity and air quality is likely to improve with economic restrictions, which have been the primary response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Such restrictions, termed non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), range in stringency from school closures to full economic shutdowns and curfews. The relationship between economic activity and air pollution is
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