Pakistan’s Rising Air Pollution Crisis

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 4 million people around the world succumb to air pollution-related illnesses on an annual basis, due to toxic air quality levels that go well beyond the standard guidelines outlined by the WHO.

As mentioned in a recent State of Global Air 2018 report, “Worldwide exposure to PM2.5 [atmospheric particulate matter that poses the greatest health risks by affecting the heart and lungs] contributed to 4.1 million deaths from heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and respiratory infections in 2016. PM2.5 was responsible for a substantially larger number of attributable deaths than other more well-known risk factors (such as alcohol use, physical inactivity, or high sodium intake).”

In addition, the report also highlights countries such as China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that have “increasing trends in PM2.5 exposure.” However, while China has made some improvement in tackling air pollution, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh “have experienced the steepest increases in air pollution levels since 2010 and now present the highest sustained PM2.5 concentrations.”

In Pakistan, regardless of any government intervention or even social awareness campaigns – informing citizens how to protect themselves from the toxic smog – the past few years have seen an extraordinary rise in air pollution, particularly during the onset of winter. According to a report by Lancet, a medical journal, approximately 22 percent of deaths in Pakistan each year are attributed to air pollution.

This led Abid Omar, a young entrepreneur based in Karachi, to initiate the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI), which provides real time data on air quality in the country. Having lived in Beijing, China, for a few years, Omar realized how imperative publicly available data was in instigating a much-needed call to action regarding China’s air pollution issue.

“I saw how [it] helped change the conversation there; how the Beijing government first claimed ignorance, then started monitoring air quality and making the data accessible to the public,” he said. “And finally, [how they] then started to implement policies that are trailblazing for excellence in environmental governance.”

But on his home turf, Omar discovered that there was an alarming lack of data on air pollution levels in Pakistan. “When I saw that the Government of Pakistan did not even have the equipment to measure air quality in 2016, I decided to set up my own air quality monitoring network.”

After installing imported air quality monitors in the cities of Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Karachi, Omar says that through his platform, he was able to engage citizens who understood the gravity of the situation: that the air in Pakistan truly does stand as an “invisible killer.”

“Our monitors are very simple; we use a laser sensor to detect invisible yet deadly particles and poisons in the air,” Omar explained. “Anyone with an internet connection can help host one. We monitor the data through the internet, and make it freely and publicly accessible in real time through our phone app, our website, and our Twitter feeds.”

The government has been guilty of gross negligence over the years. Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and activist, said that while the air pollution crisis propelled the government to prepare a smog policy and a Smog Health Emergency Action Plan last year, in addition to collaborating with the World Bank “for assistance to improve its capacity to monitor and enforce air quality standards,” the road ahead is a long one. 

With the new government taking office in August, all eyes are on new Prime Minister Imran Khan, and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). Having reached its billion tree target (also known as the Billion Tree Tsunami) in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) in August 2017, perhaps the current PTI government can implement tangible policies to safeguard its citizens in lieu of the unrelenting air pollution crisis.

But Alam remains realistic. “Air pollution control involves serious commitment to green alternatives and reduced use of coal as an energy source,” he said. “This will be costly, and [the costs] will be borne by government, and private industry. No one seriously wants to tax pollution because of the political backlash from politically powerful export industries or the tens of thousands of powerful associations in the SME [small and medium enterprise] sector.”

And while the smog events of the previous two years have drawn considerable attention to the issue at hand, Alam said, “It remains to be seen if the new assemblies will take on their responsibility of legislating for air quality or whether the new provincial government will give priority to the issue.”

But what tangible steps can the new government take to protect its citizens, given that approximately 135,000 lives are lost each year due to the air pollution crisis?

“Polluting industries will have to invest in new boiler technology and greener energy sources,” according to Alam. “The fuel in our cars and diesel in our trucks needs to be cleaned, so refineries will have to invest in better technologies. Investments will have to be made in public transport and the design of our cities to reduce the need for cars. This will be a considerable amount of money both in the private sector and the public sector – well outside the budgets of the provincial or even federal governments. And I don't see industry making clean air investments any time soon.  Regulation of air quality will be a balancing on a fine line between encouragement (through financial instruments, green loans and the like) and regulation (like enforcement and penalties).”

Alam is matter-of-fact: “These are tall orders. They won't come into play unless they are backed by serious political commitment. It's incumbent on the new assemblies to take this threat seriously.”

A well-known environmental journalist, Amar Guriro, is of the opinion that the air pollution crisis stands as one of the main challenges to be tackled by the new government.

“Pakistan is one of the [main] countries that has fallen victim to climate change,” Guriro stated. “Different eco-regions [in the country] are witnessing extreme weather events such as severe drought, glacial lake outburst floods, reducing ground water table, and shrinking agriculture due to climate change. These phenomena are forcing people to abandon their native places and rush to the cities. Due to an influx of climate migrants, the number of vehicles and use of energy is on rise, which is causing air pollution.”

For Guriro, a mass transit system and the revival of urban forests can pave the way in minimizing the public health emergency. “However, the government needs to address the issues faced by the communities in different eco-regions (hit by extreme weather events) and help them so that rapid urbanization can be reduced,” he said, mentioning that these stand as long-term solutions to the present crisis.

But for Alam, the issue isn’t just restricted to Pakistan alone; it’s a transboundary problem that needs to be addressed.

Last year the chief minister of Delhi in India took to Twitter stating that the city had morphed into “a gas chamber.”

The smog was mainly caused due to crop burning, traffic pollutants and smoke emitted from firecrackers (lit in celebration of Diwali), resulted in PM2.5 levels exceeding up to 16 times the level considered “safe” by the government of India. And smog knows no borders.

“I'm particularly concerned about the transboundary nature of air pollution, especially in the smog season [October-December],” Alam stated. “There doesn't seem to be transboundary constituency that can speak to the Federal and Union Governments of both [India and Pakistan] about the need for cooperation in tackling the menace of air pollution and smog. After the 2017 smog event, Pakistan's Punjab minister for environment accused crop burning in India as the cause for the smog. In India, the union minister for environment said the smog wasn't as bad as the Union Carbide Bhopal gas disaster of 2014. If the political stakeholders are talking at cross-purposes, there can't be any improvement in the smog and air quality in North India and northern Pakistan.”

Dr. Uzma Khan, a wildlife biologist and the global river dolphin lead at World Wide Fund (WWF) Pakistan, reveals that a number of her family members were afflicted with allergies due to the smog that engulfed Lahore last year.

“Our doctor advised us to stay indoors given the persistent coughing and sneezing,” she said.

While Khan agrees that initiatives like PAQI have helped in making the public more aware about the air pollution crisis, she doesn’t see a concerted effort being made since the recent formation of Pakistan’s Smog Commission.

“There are numerous examples that illustrate environmental degradation and increase of particulate matter in the air. Coal-powered projects or burning anything, so to speak, contributes to increasing fine particulate matter in the atmosphere; emissions from vehicles in an urban environment are the main culprits of degrading air quality – and industry is another factor,” Khan said. “Our cities are so close to the industries, which are poorly regulated and are also by and large non-compliant. [This is] not in line with the commitments of the governments towards the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.

“Furthermore, Lahore – the city of gardens – is now a city of concrete, which is also a big contributing factor to air pollution and poor air quality. We’re living in a world where some countries are promoting vertical gardens or making it a legal requirement to convert roofs into either gardens or solar panels – but we don't see that happening in Pakistan. In the budget for the financial year 2019 the outgoing government proposed a tax reduction of hybrid cars which made me think: why didn’t they do it when they first came into power?”

Echoing Alam, Khan understands that fixing Pakistan’s air pollution issue isn’t going to be a one-off, swift operation. However, for the interim, until the new government finds its footing, mass public awareness campaigns are crucial for the country’s citizens to equip themselves to combat the atmospheric toxicity.

“There are already pledges to plant 10 billion trees which would greatly help in improving the air quality and watershed areas (depending on where the trees are planted),” she says, “Nevertheless, we also need to revamp the environment departments, building their capacity and provide them with required budgets. We need to ensure that our industries meet the required national environment quality standards – this needs to be strictly implemented. We need to promote hybrid cars in Pakistan and in fact enable our own automobile industry to manufacture hybrid vehicles. Increasing power generation is a challenge for the new government and we must switch to cleaner energy/low carbon energy sources and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and concrete steps are needed to improve access of clean energy and make it affordable for the masses. Agriculture has a big environmental footprint and it requires more sustainable crop production that benefits both environment and farmers.”

In his recent TEDxLahore talk delivered in the city last month, Omar stated that while the country’s air pollution issue stands as a public health emergency, it still carries with it a “silver lining.” This, he emphasized to a crowd full of hopeful young Pakistanis, was the growing public awareness that will eventually lead to proactive solutions in the long run. Given the increase in public discourse (and outcry) over Pakistan’s rising air toxicity, one hopes he’s right.