Dare to breathe?

Given the current net issues across the country, some of the older heads might have been telling their children or grandchildren to use this opportunity to go outside and get some fresh air. Sadly, while this would be solid advice in a country with cleaner air, Pakistan is not one of those countries. Air pollution in the country has reached toxic levels and has become an outright threat to people’s lives. According to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) Annual Update for 2024, virtually the entire population of Pakistan breathes air that doesn’t meet its own national air quality standards. The fine particulate matter (PM2.5) standard is set at 15 micrograms per cubic metre in Pakistan, but our actual PM2.5 concentration is estimated to be around 40 µg/m³. Due to these high levels of air pollution, the AQLI report claims that if Pakistan could simply meet its own air standards it could raise people’s life expectancy by 2.3 years. Meeting the WHO air pollution guidelines would result in an even greater rise in life expectancy by 3.3 years. Another way of reading this is that our air is so polluted it is actually shortening the lives of the people. In Peshawar, the most polluted city in the country as per the report, people would gain 5.6 years in life expectancy. All of this means that air pollution is now a bigger threat to life in Pakistan than drinking and car crashes and even diseases like HIV/AIDS.

Given that we all breathe the same air, there is simply no way one can escape this problem regardless of their class or socioeconomic status. As such, the poorest people in a more developed country have more breathable air than the richest Pakistanis. This is not, however, an issue that affects Pakistan alone. Overall, South Asia (which includes Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan) has the worst air among all the regions covered by the report for the period 1998-2022. This point is key, as having high air standards in isolation will not make much of a difference if the entire region’s air is heavily polluted. This calls for cross-border agreements to strengthen air standards. In fact, if we look at where all of this air pollution in South Asia comes from, we will see that nations like India and Pakistan actually have similar problems. The use of substandard fuels such as wood, the burning of agricultural and other waste and the lack of enforcement of fuel standards must be addressed at the local level by individual countries. Accelerating the use of emissions-free renewable energy will also be crucial. The failure to take such steps will only cost the people of Pakistan and the region overall years of life they could have otherwise enjoyed.