Cost of breathing

If you are a family of five living in Lahore, would you act to save twenty years of your family's life? You should - because the air you are breathing right now is silently stealing those years from you. Lahore is now ranked among the most polluted cities in the world, where the average citizen is expected to lose five years of life due to toxic air. That means a family of five will collectively lose two decades - not to war, not to hunger, but simply to breathing. And the threat is even more severe if your home includes young children or elderly parents, because the cost of breathing polluted air is cruelly higher for vulnerable lungs.

Once, motivational speakers preached that everyone has the same opportunities when it comes to sunlight, water, air, time and happiness, but maybe it does not hold true if one has to breathe air with having AQI several times higher than the allowable limits - courtesy systemic failure of successive governments, indifference and neglect from the concerned quarters!

Pakistan burns $130 million every single day simply to treat the damage caused by poisoned air. This translates into an astonishing $47.8 billion economic loss annually - 5.88% of the country's GDP - driven by respiratory diseases, productivity collapse, disrupted education, and 22,000 premature deaths each year. Over 11 million Pakistani children under five breathe toxic air on a regular basis, and the 2024 smog crisis in Punjab alone sent 1.8 million people to hospitals within weeks. Yet the country continues to treat toxic air as a seasonal inconvenience rather than what it truly is: a national economic and public health emergency, according to Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, a climate change expert.

Pakistan's air crisis did not appear overnight - it was engineered through decades of neglect and short-term governance. Between 2000 and 2024, the country produced policy after policy - the National Environmental Policy (2005), the National Climate Change Policy (2012), and the National Clean Air Policy (2023 ) - yet none translated into real action.

Air pollution in Pakistan is not a mystery—it comes from four dominant sources: transport, industry, agriculture and structural constraints. Transport alone contributes around 45% of annual emissions, running on some of the dirtiest fuel in Asia. Outdated factories, coal-fired brick kilns and furnace oil add another 40%. Crop burning inflames the crisis each winter, while low wind speeds and temperature inversions lock the pollution over Punjab for weeks.

Even institutions meant to safeguard the environment have been weakened. The Environmental Protection Agency lacks independence and capacity, raising a fundamental question: how can a regulator hold the state accountable when it is bound to it? Pakistan now needs a new direction - one grounded not in policing but in economic transformation. The solution lies in a multi-track strategy: carbon monetisation, transport reform, agricultural and industrial modernisation, and regional smog diplomacy. Carbon monetisation is Pakistan's biggest unrealised opportunity, turning emission reductions into revenue through carbon credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. The Delta Blue Carbon Project in Sindh has already proven the model, and Thailand's Bangkok E-Bus Programme provides a path for financing electric public transport using carbon revenues. Clifton Urban Forest, which is home to seven hundred thousand trees and hosts more than 140 bird species, also brings us a ray of hope. With 25 million vehicles generating nearly half of Pakistan's emissions, electrifying buses, trucks and motorcycles could unlock billions in carbon finance, if Pakistan establishes a national carbon market authority.

Pollution does not respect borders. Pakistan shares its air basin with India, Nepal and Bangladesh. A bilateral "shared air" framework between the two Punjabs, coordinating air quality alerts, agricultural practices and satellite monitoring would be a pragmatic first step.

Pakistan can still reclaim its air, but only if it treats smog as a national priority, not a seasonal inconvenience.