Among many other problems, winter season brings the ire of smog particularly to the plains of Punjab. This has been the situation over the last six years at least. Dropping mercury levels have again pushed Lahore to the top among cities with the worst air quality around the world. At the time of writing, Lahore stood first in Air Visual’s rankings for worst air quality with Air Quality Index (AQI) of over 300.
And this is just the beginning. Smog season has become a regular occurrence, peaking between October to January. Six years should have been enough for the authorities to address this menace. Afterall, this is not a new phenomenon; countries around the world have been in and out of it. London’s smog might be too old for ballparking, but China’s and far eastern countries’ progress and development in this space should have offered solutions at home.
While the current government has taken important steps to combat smog, some lacunas explain why the situation is not much better. One of them is the approach, which is more reactive than adaptive, proactive and/or preventive. Relevant authorities mostly wake up from the snooze only a few weeks before all hell breaks loose. Whereas the exercise should be to quell all contributory factors to smog rather than last minute fixes to sustain the next couple of months only. Take the example of brick kilns that have been operating on old technology that contributes to smog; fining these brick kilns or shutting them down for two months is not a sustainable solution. The idea should be to upgrade to a technology that gives out minimum emissions and soot like the Zigzag technology, which should have been put in place years ago. The government has however now given a deadline of Dec 31,2020 for the brick manufacturers to upgrade. This should have been done years ago.
Similarly, the main factor behind smog in Lahore and other cities of Punjab such as Faisalabad and Gujranwala is not crop burning or the paddy burning in India. Sure, they also contribute; but a high base is set by vehicular emissions and unregulated fuel burning by the industries and factories - which is mostly subpar and hazardous to health. The only factor working for Karachi (that also is one of the most polluted cities charts) is the sea breeze – the absence of which would wreak havoc on the city’s air quality as well. These two factors – vehicular emissions and low-grade fuel consumption by both large and small/cottage industries should be dealt with on priority with a long term solution envisioned and not just a temporary fix of banning or halting operations for a couple of months in a single city.
Then there needs to be a clear realization of the lopsided power generation policy; while furnace oil (a dirty fuel) is apparently being phased out, reliance on coal power generation has been up. If the government does not gets rid of them completely, alternate energy production should actively be sought to compensate for the damage caused by coal. The government has introduced a new Alternate Energy Policy, which aims to increase renewable Energy’s share to 30 percent by 2030. Work to get there should be expedited. A recent report by World Bank titled: “Variable Renewable Energy Integration and Planning Study” finds that achieving a least cost electricity mix in Pakistan would require a rapid expansion of VRE, reaching at least 30 percent of the installed capacity by 2030. It goes on to show that utilization of existing fossil fuel – power generation capacity will decrease significantly, and generation options such as imported coal and imported gas are no longer competitive due to the declining cost of VRE combined with the expansion of hydropower and domestic coal capacities. For domestic coal, it highlights that it is not economical when the external costs of GHG emissions are considered among other factors like water scarcity etc.
And while we are at it, let’s not forget that smog has a strong ally this year – COVID-19. Poor air quality aids in the spread of infection, and smog and COVID-19 second wave could be a double whammy for the inhabitants. A recent research titled, “Severe air pollution links to higher mortality in COVID-19 patients: The “double-hit” hypothesis” in Elsevier’s Journal of Infection to analyze the relationship between air pollutants concentration (PM 2.5 and NO2) and COVID-19 outbreak, in terms of transmission, number of patients, severity of presentation and number of deaths, showed that the highest number of COVID-19 cases were recorded in the most polluted regions with patients presenting with more severe forms of the disease requiring ICU admission. Also, the mortality was two-fold higher in these regions.
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