‘The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) shows that strong pollution policies pay back in additional years of life for people across the world. The AQLI’s latest data reveals that reducing air pollution to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guideline would add 2.2 years onto global life expectancy. …Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan account for nearly a quarter of the global population and consistently rank among the top five most polluted countries in the world. As a result, South Asia accounts for 60 percent of the person-years that are expected to be lost globally due to pollution levels exceeding the WHO guideline. Average life expectancy across these four countries would be 5.6 years higher if pollution concentrations complied with the WHO guideline. … In Pakistan, the average resident could live 4.2 years longer, with those in Lahore, the second largest city, living 5 years longer.’ – Excerpts from ‘Air Quality Life Index, September 2021, Annual Update’
Climate change crisis, significantly fuelled by using fossil fuel, has been central to causing air pollution globally. Hence, even during the times of lockdowns in most parts of the world globally last year, the positive of this was strongly met by the negative impact of wildfires, on the overall air quality globally. The news reporting on the Report by AQLI ‘New data shows strong air pollution policies lengthen life expectancy’ pointed out in this regard: ‘Over the last year, Covid-19 lockdowns brought blue skies to the most polluted regions of the globe, while wildfires exacerbated by a drier and hotter climate sent smoke to the normally clean skies of cities thousands of miles away. The conflicting events offer two visions of the future. The difference between those futures lies in policies to reduce fossil fuels.’ Moreover, a recently published Guardian article by its environment editor, Damian Carrington, pointed out while highlighting the same AQLI report that ‘Fossil fuel burning is causing air pollution and the climate crisis, but nations have much greater power to cut dirty air within their own borders. The climate crisis is now also adding to air pollution by driving wildfires, completing a vicious circle, the scientists said.’
The Report highlights the pollution reduction policies as important model for countries to learn from as it quite drastically reduced its air pollution problem, especially since 2013, as pointed out in the same news reporting on the AQLI report as ‘China is an important model showing that policy can produce sharp reductions in pollution in short order. Since the country began its “war against pollution” in 2013, China has reduced its particulate pollution by 29 percent—making up three-quarters of the reductions in air pollution across the world. As a result, China’s people have added about 1.5 years onto their lives, assuming these reductions are sustained. To put China’s success into context, it took several decades and recessions for the United States and Europe to achieve the same pollution reductions that China was able to accomplish in 6 years.’ Pakistan, which is actively engaged with China on the economic development side, mainly through the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project, should learn from Chinese policies in reducing air pollution, and possibly seek technical assistance if need be. This will indeed be also beneficial to the next-door neighbour China, as air pollution falls in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s air quality is so poor that as per the Report it is the fourth worse country in terms of air quality globally. As per the Report’s factsheet on Pakistan, ‘Pakistan is today the world’s fourth most polluted country. Air pollution shortens the average Pakistani’s life expectancy by 3.9 years, relative to what it would have been if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline was met. Some areas of Pakistan fare much worse than average, with air pollution shortening lives by almost 7 years in the most polluted regions. All of Pakistan’s 228 million people live in areas where the annual average particulate pollution level exceeds the WHO guideline as well as Pakistan’s own air quality standard of 15 µg/m³.’
On the other hand, the Report says that properly tackling air pollution could have a significant positive impact on the life expectancies of people in the country, whereby for instance, as per the Report, ‘The most polluted areas of the country are the provinces of Sindh, Baluchistan, and Punjab, where residents would gain between 3 to 5 years of life expectancy if particulate pollution were permanently reduced to the WHO guideline. In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, residents would gain 5.2 years. In Lahore, the second largest city, residents would gain 4 years. Residents of Islamabad would gain 3.1 years.’
The problem at the heart of it is the reduction in reliance on fossil fuel. This would require finding a right balance between the overall economic goals and environmental objectives, and to transition reliance of economic objectives on fossil fuel usage to zero by 2050 at most, given also the overall global need to completely withdraw reliance on fossil fuel by this time to have a reasonable chance to save the world from the worst ravages of climate change crisis. Hence, there is a need to have a coherent macroeconomic and environmental policy in the country, with concrete actionable plans planned and approved by Parliament in a way as to safeguard at least fundamental changes in this regard, beyond election cycles, and over the long-term. The initiative to plant trees in a very ambition way is indeed a big step in the right direction, but a similar kind of effort is needed to shift reliance from fossil fuel usage to renewable energy. For instance, such policies as reducing taxes on small sized cars, as was done in the recent Budget, do not augur well with the overall drive to reduce carbon foot-print and planting trees in the country, and need to be replaced as quickly as possible with policies that aggressively bring in public transportation that runs on renewable energy sources.
(The writer holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona; he previously worked at the International Monetary Fund)
He tweets@omerjaved7
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021