The fumes we breathe
Industrialisation, urbanisation, motorisation trends suggest air quality in Pakistan will only worsen in coming years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its 2014 report concerning global air pollution using a database of 1,600 cities across 91 countries. Alarming, the report has identified Pakistan to have the most severe ambient (outdoor) air pollution problem.
The WHO is not the only entity to have raised this concern. The World Bank’s newly-released report titled ‘Cleaning Pakistan’s Air’ also points out that Pakistan, having become the most urbanised country in South Asia, has a very serious problem.
Health-damaging particulates in the air in Pakistan are on average more than four times above levels recommended in WHO guidelines. Outdoor air pollution alone causes more than 80,000 hospital admissions per year; nearly 8,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, and almost five million cases of lower respiratory cases in children under the age of five.
The sources of air pollution are diffuse. Industrial facilities, particularly those consuming fossil fuels, are emitting dangerous amounts of air pollutants. Emissions from large-scale facilities, such as cement, fertilizer, sugar, steel, and power plants, which use furnace oil that is high in sulfur content, are other major contributors to our poor air quality. A wide range of small to medium-scale industries, including brick kilns, steel re-rolling and plastic molding, contribute substantially to urban air pollution by using ‘waste’ fuels, including old tires, paper, wood, and textile waste.
Industrial emissions are being made worse by the widespread use of small diesel electric generators in commercial and residential areas in response to the electricity outages. Also, burning of thousands of tons of solid waste at low temperatures produces a lot of carbon monoxide, and other toxic and carcinogenic pollutants. Even in rural areas, farmers regularly burn cane fields to ease harvesting in Punjab and Sindh, which adds to the amount of bad outdoor air that our citizenry breathes.
Despite the passage of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act and the issuance of national environmental policy, major implementation gaps still exist especially concerning air quality management. Environmental measures acknowledged by the government to clean up the air include block tree plantation, forestation in deserts, or proper disposal of solid waste, have not been effectively implemented. Nor are attempts to control industrial pollution evident, such as replacement of fuel oil and coal by gas, introduction of low-sulfur diesel and furnace oil, and placing emphasis on energy efficiency, or end-of-pipe pollution control technology.
The government needs to adopt measures to reduce the country’s motorisation trend, and promote the use of buses which can transport increasingly larger volumes of people at moderately higher speeds even in very congested urban areas. In view of CNG supply constraints and more energy-efficient alternative uses of CNG (such as thermal power generation), entities like the World Bank have advised that CNG use be restricted in automobiles for use in commercial and public service vehicles only (taxis, buses, rickshaws etc.). However, other World Bank endorsed prescriptions such as use of market-based instruments such as use of pollution charges or tradable permits, based on arguments that the polluting party pays for the damage done to the natural environment are problematic due to their commodification of an essential public good, and have not produced encouraging results internationally.
It is clear that much more effective institutional coordination is required to implement some of the above identified measures to tackle the poor air quality problem. Otherwise, the current industrialisation, urbanisation and motorisation trends suggest that the air quality in Pakistan will only worsen in coming years.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2014.
The WHO is not the only entity to have raised this concern. The World Bank’s newly-released report titled ‘Cleaning Pakistan’s Air’ also points out that Pakistan, having become the most urbanised country in South Asia, has a very serious problem.
Health-damaging particulates in the air in Pakistan are on average more than four times above levels recommended in WHO guidelines. Outdoor air pollution alone causes more than 80,000 hospital admissions per year; nearly 8,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, and almost five million cases of lower respiratory cases in children under the age of five.
The sources of air pollution are diffuse. Industrial facilities, particularly those consuming fossil fuels, are emitting dangerous amounts of air pollutants. Emissions from large-scale facilities, such as cement, fertilizer, sugar, steel, and power plants, which use furnace oil that is high in sulfur content, are other major contributors to our poor air quality. A wide range of small to medium-scale industries, including brick kilns, steel re-rolling and plastic molding, contribute substantially to urban air pollution by using ‘waste’ fuels, including old tires, paper, wood, and textile waste.
Industrial emissions are being made worse by the widespread use of small diesel electric generators in commercial and residential areas in response to the electricity outages. Also, burning of thousands of tons of solid waste at low temperatures produces a lot of carbon monoxide, and other toxic and carcinogenic pollutants. Even in rural areas, farmers regularly burn cane fields to ease harvesting in Punjab and Sindh, which adds to the amount of bad outdoor air that our citizenry breathes.
Despite the passage of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act and the issuance of national environmental policy, major implementation gaps still exist especially concerning air quality management. Environmental measures acknowledged by the government to clean up the air include block tree plantation, forestation in deserts, or proper disposal of solid waste, have not been effectively implemented. Nor are attempts to control industrial pollution evident, such as replacement of fuel oil and coal by gas, introduction of low-sulfur diesel and furnace oil, and placing emphasis on energy efficiency, or end-of-pipe pollution control technology.
The government needs to adopt measures to reduce the country’s motorisation trend, and promote the use of buses which can transport increasingly larger volumes of people at moderately higher speeds even in very congested urban areas. In view of CNG supply constraints and more energy-efficient alternative uses of CNG (such as thermal power generation), entities like the World Bank have advised that CNG use be restricted in automobiles for use in commercial and public service vehicles only (taxis, buses, rickshaws etc.). However, other World Bank endorsed prescriptions such as use of market-based instruments such as use of pollution charges or tradable permits, based on arguments that the polluting party pays for the damage done to the natural environment are problematic due to their commodification of an essential public good, and have not produced encouraging results internationally.
It is clear that much more effective institutional coordination is required to implement some of the above identified measures to tackle the poor air quality problem. Otherwise, the current industrialisation, urbanisation and motorisation trends suggest that the air quality in Pakistan will only worsen in coming years.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2014.