magine a crisp November morning. You get your child ready for school – uniform, shoes, bag, lunch box. You finally whip out the most essential part of the preparation during this time of the year: a face mask each for your child and yourself as you turn off the expensive air purifier installed in your child’s bedroom. Health above everything, of course. Your child snacks on some biscuit that he tosses out of the window once the packet is empty. You now reach the long queue of vehicles outside the school – mostly one child per car, two at the most. On your way home, you notice several cars emitting smoke into the atmosphere. Pathetic, you think to yourself as your mind wanders to the last time your car went for preventive maintenance.

The onset of winter magnifies the problem of air quality in Pakistan. While it is a country-wide problem, being landlocked, the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa experience the worst of it. According to a report published by IQ Air in 2023, Pakistan is now the second most polluted country in the world – right behind Bangladesh. As we approach the yearly hue and cry by the public and abrupt actions by the authorities, such as arresting farmers, sealing brick kilns, closing down industries – it may be time for some introspection as citizens.

According to Imran Hamid, the Environment and Climate Change Department director general, there are about 45 rice mills in the Kasur district – none of those have emission control systems. Hamid states that each of these mills has been given a final warning to an install emission control system or risk being closed this winter. Similarly, there have been reports of tyre pyrolysis plants operating in Sheikhupura, Gujranwala and Lahore. These plants extract crude oil from worn out tyres and are significant contributors to air pollution in the area. According to Hamid, all plants running in Sheikhupura have been sealed but the ones operating in Lahore have obtained court orders so that no action can be taken against them at the moment. The plants are illegal because of the environmental and human cost of running them. However, if owners find a way to keep them running, through whatever means, authorities are not the only ones to blame for this.

These units have not been set up by aliens trying to wipe out the population of the Punjab by releasing poisonous gasses – even though it might seem so. Rather, these are run by regular citizens who breathe the same air and probably raise their children in the same city. While top-down actions are taking place, one does question the need for these extreme steps. It is surprising, to say the least, as to why unliveable and deadly atmospheric conditions are not enough of a deterrent on their own.

The Air Quality Index published a report in 2021 that said that the entire population of Pakistan lives in areas where the annual average particulate pollution, PM 2.5, exceeds the World Health Organisation’s guideline. PM 2.5 has reduced the life expectancy of the residents of the country by almost four years. This figure goes up to seven years in cities like Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur and Peshawar. It is estimated that around 128,000 people die because of air pollution and related illnesses in Pakistan, according to a report published by Fair Finance Pakistan.

For a country hanging by a thread economically and barely surviving, it is difficult to see environmental and climate challenges become a top priority for those in power – however grave the problem may be. But if as citizens, we opt for one child per car for school and college; for private institutions to not have bus services for their students; for industrialists to manage operations without proper emission control systems and brick kilns to function without updating their technologies according to government policies – some of the responsibility shifts to the people as well.

The environmental and climate challenges are an existential threat; we all need to identify these as such. Without individual efforts to reduce the carbon footprint and general mindfulness when it comes to the environment, the annual outcry about the environment as November arrives seems nothing but hypocritical.

The author is based in Lahore. She can be reached at n.sukhera@columbia.edu