Environmental sustainability in the COVID-19 era: Impact and potential techniques of sustainability

The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis affecting everyone, individual physical work. It is spreading human suffering, infecting the economy and upending people’s lives. The drastic measure taken to mitigate the spread of the virus and the shutdown of economic activities has significant impacts on the environment. Therefore, this study intends to examine the positive environmental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, by taking into cognizance the available scientific literatures. This study shows that, the pandemic crisis significantly improves air quality in various cities across the world including Port Harcourt, Nigeria, reduces GHGS emission, lower water pollution and noise, and reduces or restores ecological system as a result of pressure reduction on the tourist destruction. As the economic activities returns, after the pandemic, there seems to be significant increase in pollution level. Hence, this study also highlights the possible ways to achieve long term environmental benefits. The study suggests among others, green investment approach for economic growth. The proposed techniques if implemented might be helpful for the global environmental sustainability.