Air pollution: Locked down by COVID-19 but not arrested

Aug 19, 2020

An antenna is seen from a building as smog covers Jakarta, Indonesia, July 12, 2020. Picture taken July 12, 2020. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan - RC25UH9N4QCY

Average NO2 levels between March and April of this year were lower than the entirety of 2019. Image: REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

Urvashi Narain

Lead Economist, World Bank’s Environment, Natural Resources, and Blue Economy global practice

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Future of the Environment is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Future of the Environment

Figure 1: NO2 levels declined sharply during the lock down globally

Average NO2 concentrations based on satellite data between March 15-April 30, 2020 (with lock down) Image: World Bank Staff

Sentinel-5P Nitrogen Dioxide (tropospheric vertical column) data processed through Google Earth Engine. Image: World Bank Staff

Figure 2: NO2 levels declined sharply across South Asia during the lock down

Average NO2 concentrations based on satellite data between March 15-April 30, 2020 (with lock down) and March 15-April 30, 2019 (without lock down) Image: World Bank Staff

Daily 7-day rolling average NO2 concentrations based on ground-level monitors before, during, and after the lock down Image: World Bank Staff

Figure 4: Impact of lock down on PM2.5 level was not as large in Hubei (China), France, and IGP (India)

Daily 7-day rolling average PM2.5 concentrations based on ground-level monitors before, during, and after the lock down Image: World Bank Staff

Figure 5: No impact of lock down on PM2.5 levels in Chinese cities

Daily 7-day rolling average PM2.5 concentrations based on ground-level monitors before, during, and after the lock down in Shanghai, Tainjin and Beijing Image: World Bank Staff

Figure 6: Mixed impact of lock down on PM2.5 levels in Indian cities

Daily 7-day rolling average PM2.5 concentrations based on ground-level monitors before, during, and after the lock down in New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai Image: World Bank Staff

Examples of policy measures to reduce air pollution while supporting economic recovery

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.