While there’s no doubt life has been difficult amidst the COVID-19 pandemic for an array of different reasons, there is some positive news for the UAE.
Due to the lockdowns and movement restrictions that have been in place while the national sterilisation programme has been taking place, which has helped to prevent the spread of coronavirus, there’s also been another major benefit — the air quality across the nation has improved drastically.
With the majority of workers now working from home, students learning online from home and general lack of people being out and about, emissions have dropped significantly.
According to Environment Abu Dhabi, the emission of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide has dropped by 78 per cent in some part of the UAE’s capital city.
Having observed the quality of air over the last eight weeks, the organisation found levels of nitrogen dioxide dropped by 62 per cent “due to efforts made to control human and traffic movement, as part of the precautionary measures to combat COVID-19″.
Specifically in the area of Al Maqta they found a 78 per cent drop and a 70 per cent drop in Khalifa City.
Dr Shaikha Salem Al Dhaheri, the secretary general of Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, described the knock-on effect of the movement restrictions as an “extremely positive effect on the environment”.
“Spanning a period of eight weeks, we have been monitoring air quality in Abu Dhabi and noticed a significant decrease in air pollutants which implies that limiting traffic movement has had an extremely positive effect on the environment,” she explained in a statement.
“This trend is in line with the global improvement in air quality in several of the major cities of the world that have imposed strict regulations on movement to encourage social distancing and save lives.”
