Breathe!

Punjab as a whole, but especially the provincial capital Lahore, is once again in the grip of what has become a regular (no longer necessarily seasonal) affliction: smog. Normally, the stifling mixture of pollutants is at its worst as the weather turns colder, which historically is associated with October.

However, human activity in today’s world has so disturbed the ecology of the globe that seasons that could once be used to track the calendar instead of the other way around, are now unreliable markers of weather change. Neither the monsoons, nor the four seasons now appear to follow what was the long established order of our climate.

While this climatic disturbance, ascribed worldwide to the Earth’s extraordinary warming because of human activity and increasingly described as an ecological calamity in progress, has its own implications for crop patterns and weather disturbance, it also is the setting for another product of human activity: generating pollutants that remain suspended in the air in concentrations that threaten human health.

Lahore, or Punjab, is by no means the only urbanised area in the world that suffers from the malady of smog. After all, nature is no respecter of boundaries drawn by humankind. Thus, near and afar, from Indian Punjab to virtually every urban conglomerate in the world, particular rate concentration threatens an epidemic of health issues, concentrated in the depositing of such pollution into the lungs when we breathe. Especially vulnerable are children, the elderly, and those already suffering from, or sensitive to, breathing maladies.

What is strange about this year’s smog invasion is that it has occurred when October has proved warmer than ever in living memory. The average maximum and minimum temperature throughout the month has remained 32 degrees and 27 degrees respectively. This suggests that our previous assumption that cold weather is one of the culprits in engendering smog may not be true. Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Kasur, Islamabad and a host of Punjab’s other cities have been afflicted to a greater or lesser extent by the dreaded phenomenon.

The Punjab government has ascribed the record breaking Air Quality Index (AQI) reading of over 1,000 to pollution being carried from Indian Punjab by the winds blowing from east to west in our direction.

While such a conclusion has yet to be scientifically confirmed, it has prompted the Pakistani Punjab government to suggest it will conduct ‘smog diplomacy’ to win over Indian Punjab to joint steps to control smog. Of course one does not know as yet if the idea is to stop the winds from blowing or, if so, how? After all, this may go the way of King Canute’s desire to turn back the sea.

The Punjab government appears to be floundering in its response to the smog emergency. The steps it has announced so far, e.g. closure (temporary for the moment) of primary schools (to protect vulnerable children), ‘green’ lockdowns (temporary localised measures to prevent the worst smoke-emitting vehicles, etc., from entering particularly afflicted areas), exhortations to polluting factories, brick kilns, stubble-burning farmers to desist, do not do more than touch the surface of a far more serious problem that has no easy, quick answers.

Where does the smog come from? There is a dearth of objective, scientific studies on this, but the few available suggest that in a city such as Lahore, 60 percent pollution is produced by vehicles, 20 percent by factories and brick kilns, and the rest by seasonal stubble burning. Accurate or not, at least this analysis helps us focus on the priorities required to tackle the crisis.

Lahore, for example, has some 4.5 million motorcycles and 1.3 million cars and trucks on its roads. Take a deep breath and survey any major road, say the Main Boulevard Gulberg, and you will see a blue haze suspended over the road. So the first culprit is the surfeit of vehicles on our roads, allegedly spewing toxic petrol and diesel fumes, exacerbated by the allegedly low quality of these fuels.

Since there is no integrated urban transport system in the city (the overhead Metro and bus service notwithstanding), which in the late 1990s-early 2000s was mooted with Japanese assistance to consist of a north-south underground rail system in the city’s built-up areas and an above-ground in the suburbs (standard practice the world over), connected to branch lines traversing east to west, with bus terminals at their last stops, the 14 million citizens of Lahore perforce have to travel in their own vehicles to work, etc. That ideal mass transit system fell foul of partisan politics and regime change, leaving us holding the pot of our present polluted existence.

A mass transit urban system is still required, in fact is a critical necessity if this excessive load of private vehicles are to be taken off the roads, particularly during morning and evening rush hours. Factories have to be forced to employ environmentally friendly technology to minimise their contribution to the air mess.

Future factory planning, if any, should seek to locate such enterprises away from the cities (which is what London did after the 1950s deadly fog/smog crisis). Brick kilns must be forced to employ less polluting zig-zag technology or be shut down. Any enterprise using foul fuel such as rubber tyres must be permanently closed. Stubble burning must be stopped through the alternative of super-seeders and other modern technology to make stubble burning unnecessary.

All this cannot be accomplished in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. It will take many years, implying people will continue to suffer in the meantime. The neglect of this issue by successive governments has brought us to this sorry pass. Such neglect from now on invites the wrath of the suffering public.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024