PLEDGES FOR CLEAN AIR
Efforts that tackle pollution’s effects, rather than its source, miss the point, said Ahmad Ali Gul at Lahore’s University of Management and Technology.
“It’s like when you have a bathtub and it’s overflowing and it’s creating a huge mess, do you first grab a towel or do you first close the tap?” he said.
“First, we need to focus on reducing the emissions and then we talk about how to protect ourselves from smog.”
The government has blamed rival India, which borders Punjab province, for pollution blowing over into Lahore.
But Pakistan has limited vehicle emissions standards, and officials admit 83 per cent of Lahore’s carbon emissions are from transport.
“Switching to a cleaner fuel would give immediate results, we’ve seen it in other countries,” said Frank Hammes, the global CEO of the Switzerland-based AQI air quality project.
But that “needs a pretty strong central effort to push down sometimes the painful changes that need to be made in order to reduce air pollution”, he added.
Pakistan’s government wants electric vehicles to account for a third of new sales by 2030.
Cheaper Chinese models launched in Pakistan in 2024, but currently make up just a fraction of overall car sales in a country where 40 per cent of the 240 million population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Pakistan had a taste of clean air during the pandemic, when a lockdown forced vehicles off the streets and factories to close in March 2020, but it was shortlived as the economic impact was too great for many to bear.
“Air quality improved so much that we could even see the stars in Lahore in the evening,” said Omar Masud, a director of Urban Unit, which analyses pollution data for the government.
While climate change can make air pollution worse, few Pakistanis worry about global warming, explained Abdul Sattar Babar, Ipsos director for Pakistan.
“Most Pakistanis are overwhelmed by the economic challenges that they are facing,” he said.
“When you can barely survive, climate issues are obviously not your primary concern.”
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