Donors don’t care much about air pollution

With winter ending, millions of people in cities like Lahore and Delhi can breathe a bit easier. While the quality of air in these burgeoning cities is still not healthy, it is better than what the citizenry was breathing during ‘smog season’. However, this respite will be brief. As things stand, smog season will return once again nearer the end of the year.

Besides the toxic mixture of fog and pollutants, which gets trapped near the ground due to winter temperature inversion, and shrouds large parts of Punjab on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, the air quality in the rest of the two countries, or many other countries in the global south, is not great either. In fact, air pollution has become a serious global health problem. Well over a hundred countries do not presently meet air quality standards set by the WHO.

Around seven million people around the world are dying each year due to illnesses directly attributable to air pollution. Still, this problem is not getting the sort of attention it deserves within the international donor community. Perhaps this neglect is because unlike global warming or pandemics, air pollution is a more localised problem. While the deterioration of air quality in Pakistani or Indian cities can be blamed on irresponsible actions just across the border, this poor air quality does not shift further afield.

The Clean Air Fund has noted that only one per cent of international development funding is allocated to fund efforts to clean up the air. Yet, paying more attention to air pollution makes good sense given that addressing this problem can help reduce the cost of dealing with multiple associated diseases ranging from heart and lung problems to strokes and cancer. Bad air quality has also been linked to cognitive problems, especially amongst younger people, which in turn also adversely impacts educational outcomes.

The Clean Air Fund also recognises that there are no quick-fix solutions to improve air quality. Curbing air pollution necessitates making major changes to a country’s energy portfolio, its transport systems, as well as agricultural and industrial policies. It is quite difficult for donors to fund distinct interventions which can deal with these multiple challenges simultaneously.

National governments, however, do have the capacity to undertake such comprehensive measures. Moreover, while donor agencies can choose to ignore the problem of air pollution, governments of countries where millions of people are being subjected to alarming levels of pollution on an annual basis don’t have the luxury of remaining oblivious.

The national resolve to address hazardous air pollution is obviously lacking across much of the global south. However, even if this resolve strengthens, the availability of adequate resources will remain a challenge for heavily indebted and resource constrained countries. For example, a heavily indebted country like Pakistan would be hard pressed to implement ambitious plans like the recently formulated National Clean Air Policy without significant external financing, given the current state of the economy.

Pakistan wants to discourage use of widely used wood and biomass stoves, and instead promote use of cleaner and more fuel-efficient cooking and heating methods. Its new clear air policy document recognises the need to remove unfit vehicles from the road and clamp down on industrial emissions. Such efforts require more than political will. They need major investments, and institutional strengthening to improve enforcement capacity. Improving the quality of fuel in the country is also a much-needed step, but upgrading to better quality fuel requires resources too, as do efforts to offer farmers alternatives to prevent stubble and waste burning, which worsens air pollution.

Countries like Pakistan, which urgently need more resources to contend with air pollution, should collectively demand that donors who have lent billions of dollars to finance energy and industrial projects dependent on fossil fuels, should now help clean up the air, the quality of which has been significantly worsened due to short-sighted economic development strategies.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2024.

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