COVID-19 and the Environmental Regulatory Response: Compendium of Regulatory, Ad Hoc Changes and Implications

Using open source and official documents, we documented and analyzed changes in environmental regulations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We accumulated 71 such regulatory changes across 29 countries, spanning several environmental sectors, between March and July 2020. The objective of our analysis is to characterize trends, impacts and implications of regulatory changes adopted in response to COVID-19. Our analysis contributes to understanding the types and nature of changes that the pandemic may induce in environmental policy through behavioral changes and resource use. Examination of the data shows that countries around the globe largely pursued rollbacks and enforcement relief in response to COVID-19. However, developing countries in our data were more likely to tighten environmental regulations compared to developed economies, where steps towards deregulation dominated regulatory changes. The data also shows that actions in the energy sector were geared toward deregulation. Air quality and biodiversity regulations were rolled back in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite rising concerns about the links between the coronavirus and pollution, wildlife, and habitat destruction. It can be concluded that the nature and type of changes in environmental regulations across countries in response to COVID-19 depended on a country’s economic development status and that the degree of regulatory changes across different sectors was driven by the differences in the social and economic impacts of the pandemic.