PAKISTAN was in attendance at the recently concluded COP28 in Dubai. The day earmarked Health Day on Dec 3 was marred by a layer of smog over the Emirati megacity. It was an altogether too familiar sight for our delegation there, given that our largest cities have some of the worst Air Quality Index (AQI) the world over.

Lahore is exceptionally bad. The World Health Organisation labels anything over an AQI value of 300 as ‘hazardous’. Lahore’s was recently 490. It often tops the world chart, vying with Delhi and Dhaka. But even in our other urban centres, nothing is close to a ‘safe’ AQI value of 100. We are breathing poison and it is killing us, slowly but surely. The WHO says that fossil-fuel emissions kill around four million people every year.

Pollutant particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, also known as PM2.5, can enter the lungs and erode respiratory cilia which protect the body from the debris we breathe in. It enters the bloodstream and can cause heart disease, cancer and their assorted complications. The winter season in particular prevents warm air from rising and traps these pollutants closer to the ground.

Pakistan’s average life expectancy is expected to be cut by more than five years. Children and pregnant women are especially at risk. Younger and younger people are developing asthma; the age at which heart disease and cancer become serious concerns will decrease as well. That was said at a paediatricians’ conference in Janu­ary this year after the last smog fallout.

We’re emitting enough pollutants to bring us to death’s door.

Our response this winter? Well, a rain dance of sorts. Last weekend, Lahore used cloud-seeding technology from the UAE to induce artificial rain for the first time to combat air pollution, but most research has found that only prolonged and heavy rain really makes an impact. A brief drizzle over smaller areas in the city might bring down some suspended soot and sulphate particles, but even as the chief minister of Punjab is spending money on 80-year-old technology, there is multiple construction work going on across the city — underpasses, flyovers, not to mention private housing societies that keep popping up like smallpox.

Yes, Pakistan’s carbon emissions don’t deserve the climate change backlash, but our smog problems have more to do with city planning and public policy. Karachi doesn’t have proper public transport, the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have more ex­­pressways than buses. And Lahore. Here’s the thing about Lahore: even at the height of Covid, the government was allowing showrooms to display new four-wheel drives and luxury vehicles. Even in the years of a respiratory pandemic we were putting vehicles on the streets that burn through exponentially more petrol and diesel. The Ring Road, the road-widening projects, the thinning green belts, these are all policies meant to facilitate private vehicles.

Lahore, and much of Pakistan’s approach to smog, has been like an arsonist who also works for the fire brigade. The coal-burning brick kilns keep getting pushed out further past the suburbs — though you wouldn’t even need so many brick kilns if you could press pause on the construction work for a second — the annual crop burning keeps being heavily penalised, the emissions coming from India have been taken up at a diplomatic level, but things seem to be getting worse, not better.

Pakistan’s Environmental Impact Assess­ment authority and the National Clean Air Policy are as stagnant as the air in Lahore.

At some point we’re going to have to accept that we are emitting enough pollutants within the city limits to bring us to death’s door, just a little faster with all the roadwork and luxury cars.

School and market closures are not sustainable so­­lutions. Neither is declaring a smog emergency every month. Impl­eme­n­ting a two-day work-from-home policy and wearing N95 masks can be sustainable, but perhaps the smartest thing so far was said by a high court judge advising the government to provide electric motorcycles for their own staff to reduce some emissions.

Just 25 years ago, in 1998, Beijing declared war on air pollution. The city was dominated by coal combustion and motor vehicles. Beijing focused on getting rid of coal-fired technology and on cleaner bio-organic fuels, industrial rezoning and minimising pollutants such as carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide. None of that would have been possible without a comprehensive air management system and strict environmental law enforcement. Even Delhi banned construction work this November. China, India, Bangladesh have looked into subsidised electric vehicles, more public transport, new brick kiln technologies and regulating construction sites. These are all policy matters to address structural problems.

Artificial rain can’t wash away bad city planning.

The writer is a journalist with a focus on human interest features.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2023