New Shape of Environmental Policy amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The article examines the connection between the environmental processes during the COVID‑19 pandemic (2019–2022) and the “greening” of the political sphere. A specific feature of environmental policy is its close linkage with the economy, since economic activity is the direct cause of anthropogenic pollution of natural environments. The environmental changes that have arisen in response to economic realities of the pandemic period have led to transformation of socio-political attitudes towards strengthening the “green” direction in the policies of the world’s leading states – the European Union member countries, the United States, Russia, China and other. The global “green agenda” was substantiated at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 and 2021, as well as at the following 26th UN Climate Change Conference 2021 (COP26) in Glasgow, actually shaping a new world order based on the environmental goals and obligations. In West European countries, with prominent green parties’ political positions, the environmental policy is formed largely from grassroots. In the United States, it depends entirely on the political situation (mostly on the sitting president’s party affiliation). Whereas the European Union and the EU states (primarily Germany and France) have seized the initiative of directing the world environmental policy, striving to take the lead in this sphere (particularly, in climate protection), the new U.S. government is now seriously challenging the European leadership. Noteworthy is that the COVID‑19 crisis has updated the green political and economic agenda globally, regardless of differences between the states, which verifies the importance and necessity of agreeing a conceptually new common approach to interaction with the environment in the short and long term.