Air pollution has been costing Pakistan $22 billion annually, an amount equal to 6.5% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), said Senator Sherry Rehman during a Senate meeting on Thursday.
Chairing a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change, the senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader highlighted the severe effects of climate change on the country’s financial and human capital.
“Previous statistics showed 128,000 pollution-related deaths annually, but fresh data places the figure at 256,000 deaths every year,” she said during the meeting.
Senator Rehman explained that while fog is a natural winter phenomenon, smog is a toxic mix of chemical pollutants, warning that pollution now claims more lives than terrorism.
The PPP leader lamented Lahore’s repeated appearance on the list for cities with dangerous air quality.
According to her, emissions from brick kilns, industries, and vehicles continue to worsen the country’s air quality.
During the meeting, the committee chairperson expressed displeasure over the absence of reliable data from the director general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“We reject this presentation due to the lack of complete figures and charts,” she said, while reprimanding the secretary of the Ministry of Climate Change for presenting unverified information.
“You were given three months, yet you came unprepared,” she stated.
Senator Rehman highlighted that in Punjab alone, smog was affecting 11 million children under the age of five, noting that young children breathe twice as fast as adults, making them more vulnerable to deadly respiratory illnesses.
The senator noted that Pakistan was declared the third most polluted country in the world last year, with Lahore continuously ranked as the most polluted city globally.
Describing the smog as “apocalyptic”, she said it was reducing average life expectancy by 3.7 to 4.6 years.
Senator Rehman noted that the federal government had earlier decided not to shut down brick kilns, but to equip them with zigzag technology, as they are mostly run by poor and low-income workers.
She concluded by stressing the need for public-private partnerships to expand air quality monitoring across Pakistan.