Environmental Debates in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Media, Communication, and the Public

The world has faced a series of pandemics in its history, and the COVID-19 pandemic is a monu-mental one, bringing about far-reaching impacts on all aspects of life, including impacts on public health, and on the way people live. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the interdependence between human beings and the environment, evident from the impact that COVID-19 has had on the environment because of the limits it put to human mobility and travel. The world has witnessed how countries experienced positive environmental impacts on their local areas through improvements in air quality, water quality and noise pollution. This was driven particularly by national lockdown(s), where social interactions and movements were limited due to work-from-home arrangements, people were encouraged to stay at home, and non-essential domestic and international travel were being halted. In the