Can COVID-19 and environmental research in developing countries support these countries to meet the environmental challenges induced by the pandemic?

Meeting the huge impact of COVID-19 on the environment requires better research on pandemic and pollution. What is the research capacity of the COVID-19 and environment in developing countries? Can this research capacity support developing countries to deal with the environmental challenges induced by the pandemic? This work is addressed to comprehensively assess the research capacity of the COVID-19 and environment in developing countries using bibliometric analysis techniques and content analysis approach to mining the Web of Science database. The results of data mining were unexpected: the global leader of the COVID-19 and environmental research was not these developed countries, but these developing countries so far, the end of 2020. Developing countries have published more papers on the pandemic and environment than developed countries, and developing countries also dominate pandemic and environmental research in terms of research institutions and authors. The results showed that (i) the impact of COVID-19 and the environment was bidirectional; (ii) energy consumption has posed great impact on environment; (iii) application of big data and artificial intelligence played an important role in improving environmental quality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, policy recommendations such as formulating relevant policies and environmental standards, strengthening international exchanges and cooperation, and adjusting and improving energy consumption structure that were put forward for developing countries to meet the environmental challenges induced by the pandemic were offered. Graphical abstract.