AIR pollution in Pakistan represents a multifaceted environmental and public policy challenge, stemming from a variety of sources that collectively degrade air quality and public health across the nation.
Key contributors include vehicular emissions from an expanding fleet of ill-maintained vehicles, industrial discharges from sectors like textiles and cement, dust from construction activities and unpaved roads, emissions from brick kilns that rely on low-quality fuel, and seasonal practices such as stubble burning. These factors interact with meteorological conditions, such as temperature inversions in winter, to trap the pollutants and create dense smog layers.
Among these, stubble burning emerges as a particularly hazardous issue during the autumn months, when farmers in Punjab incinerate crop residue post-harvest, releasing vast quantities of particulate matter and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that exacerbate the already bad pollution levels.
Stubble burning is deeply intertwined with the agrarian evolution of South Asia, particularly the rice-wheat cropping system that dominates Punjab.
Time is surely up for stubble burning as a routing agricultural practice in Pakistan. However, top-down solutions are bound to fail just as they have failed every single time we have tried.
This intensive rotation with rice sown in the monsoon (June-October), followed immediately by wheat in the dry winter (November-April) has its genesis in the Green Revolution of the 1960s. High-yielding varieties promised food security, but they came with a hidden cost: shorter crop durations and mechanised harvesting that left behind tall, dense stubble residue difficult to manage manually. In Pakistan, where Punjab’s 80 per cent mechanised rice harvest mirrors India’s, farmers face a mere 15-20-day window to clear the fields for wheat sowing, lest yields plummet owing to delayed planting. Similarly, in India’s northwestern states, the same Green Revolution dynamics have led to widespread mechanisation, amplifying the regional pollution footprint.
To the farmers, burning offers a swift solution.
It sterilises soil against pests, releases short-term nutrients like phosphorus and potassium, and costwise it is far cheaper than other methods that add up to 30pc to labour expenses. A 2019 emission inventory spanning 2000-14 reveals how this practice scaled with agricultural intensification: annual rice residue production hit 8.5 million tonnes, with 3.6-5 million tonnes burned between October and January to expedite wheat planting. In India, parallel trends show even larger scales, with over 23 million tonnes of rice stubble burned annually in Punjab and Haryana alone, contributing significantly to transboundary emissions that drift into Pakistan’s airspace during prevailing westerly winds in autumn.
Colonial-era land policies favoured monocropping, and post-independence subsidies for water and fertilisers further cemented this trend. In south Punjab villages, a 2019 study found that 85pc of the respondents viewed burning as a cultural norm, inherited from generations who saw it as essential for survival amid labour shortages and rising input costs. Yet, as climate variability shortens monsoons and intensifies winters, what was once adaptive has become maladaptive. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) attributes 20pc of Pakistan’s air pollutants to this source, a figure that underscores how historical expediency feeds an ongoing crisis. Comparable figures in India attribute up to 30pc of Delhi’s winter PM2.5 to stubble fires from neighbouring states, highlighting the shared historical roots and cross-border ramifications of this practice.
The smoke from stubble fires does not dissipate; it infiltrates lungs, soils and skies, weaving a web of health hazards. An analysis estimates that incinerating 63 million tonnes of South Asian stubble annually results in 1.2 million tonnes of particulate matter, 0.6 million tonnes of methane, and 91 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalents that spike PM2.5 levels by 40-60pc during harvest peaks. In Pakistan, this manifests as winter smog, where thermal inversions trap pollutants, turning Air Quality Index (AQI) in urban centres, such as Lahore and Multan, to hazardous levels and beyond. Across the border, Delhi experiences analogous spikes during the same period, as satellite data reveals plumes from Indian Punjab merging with those from Pakistani Punjab to form a regional haze.
The cost to human health is staggering. The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) reports that crop burning shaves 4.3 years off average life expectancy in polluted hotspots, with over 20,000 premature adult deaths and 160,000 disability adjusted life years lost annually in Pakistan alone. Infants and children bear the brunt, as is evident from a study that appeared in the journal Nature. It highlights how across India and Pakistan in-utero PM2.5 exposure from stubble burning results in 24-26 additional infant deaths and 30-36 child deaths per 1,000 births. Respiratory ailments surge, while cardiovascular and neurological diseases affect thousands more. In Lahore, where 14 million residents inhale this hazardous air, hospital admissions for pollution related illnesses triple during the smog season, costing the exchequer significant sums in lost productivity. In Delhi, similar surges overwhelm healthcare systems, with studies estimating 10,000-30,000 annual deaths attributable to stubble-related pollution.
Environmentally, the fallout erodes the very foundation of our breadbasket. Burning volatilises nitrogen (75pc loss), phosphorus and sulphur, slashing soil fertility by 25-30pc and microbial diversity, which hampers water retention and increases erosion. Black carbon, the second-largest warming agent after CO2, accelerates glacial melt in the Himalayas, threatening downstream water and food security for 1.9 billion South Asians. Economically, air pollution devours 6.5pc of GDP, up to $12 billion yearly, through diseases, absenteeism and dips in crop yield owing to acid rain and ozone formation.
A bureaucrat incentive experiment, discussed in the aforementioned Nature study, serves as a caution against relying solely on command-and-control mechanisms to address the issue. Analysing 18 million grid observations (2012-22) across India and Pakistan, it found that when winds blow smoke into a particular district, officials slash fires by 10-13pc via targeted penalties. In Lahore, a similar order reduced fires by 9pc in monitored blocks, as per satellite data. Yet, spillover effects persist. The study reveals that the incidence of stubble burning rose by 15pc when winds favoured neighbours, highlighting enforcement’s jurisdictional blind spots. This transboundary dynamic is reflected in India-Pakistan interactions as well, where Indian fires increase when winds direct smoke towards Pakistan.
To effectively address the persistent challenge of stubble burning in South Asia, policymakers should prioritise a holistic environmental policy framework. Such an approach will integrate key facets of environmental communication, emphasising stakeholder engagement over reliance on traditional command-and-control measures, like bans and fines, which have not been sustainable. A communication centred approach could foster voluntary adoption by reframing the issue from a mere regulatory burden to a shared health and economic imperative. Use of vivid, localised narratives in campaigns that depict the direct impacts of smog on family health can go a long way in facilitating this. This framing could build empathy and urgency, drawing on psychological tools like future-self visualisation exercises where farmers imagine the degraded land inheritance for their children, ultimately yielding higher compliance rates than punitive measures alone. A compelling global parallel is Indonesia’s Pertamina Corporate Social Responsibility programme for peatland fires, where corporate communication reframed fire-prone practices as community threats through targeted narratives on health and economic losses.
Building on this, policy recommendations should include audience segmentation and targeting to tailor messages for diverse groups, ensuring relevance and overcoming the ‘one-size-fits-all’ pitfalls of command and-control strategies. A more holistic policy would segment communications, delivering Punjabi language podcasts on bio-decomposers to frontline farmers, workshops for community unions, and datadriven briefs for policymakers. Besides, participatory dialogue and co-design should be embedded in policy to co-create solutions with stakeholders, contrasting sharply with the top-down enforcement of measures.
Transboundary policy options are essential given the cross-border flow of pollution. Establishing a joint Pakistan-India task force under frameworks like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) could harmonise air quality standards, share real-time satellite monitoring data on fire incidents, and co-develop incentives for alternatives to burning, such as cross-border subsidies for specific machinery.
Bilateral agreements could include mutual enforcement protocols through ‘smog diplomacy’ initiatives. Such regional approaches, supported by international bodies, would amplify national efforts and mitigate the blame-game that hinders progress.
Southeast Asia’s haze mitigation efforts offer direct lessons here. In particular, the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (2002, revised 2014), has curbed recurrent peatland fires in Indonesia and Malaysia via regional monitoring networks, early warning systems and joint suppression teams. The result has been reduced haze episodes by up to 70pc in compliant years, and fostering trust through annual ministerial meetings and public awareness drives that depoliticise the issue.
Finally, robust evaluation and feedback loops should underpin these policies to ensure iterative improvement.
By integrating satellite verification in farmer apps, annual reports on health benefits, like reduced child mortality, and goal-setting for zero-burn villages, policies can effectively refine long-term strategies. Addressing complex environmental and public policy issues, such as air pollution, through command and control or siloed approaches has not worked. Hence, what is required is a sea change in our thinking that places collaboration before conflict and collective human wellbeing before shortsighted political goals.
The writer works at the intersection of climate, ecology and society, and can be reached at imranskhalid@gmail.com
Header image: Men walk along a field as stubble burning smoke rises, in Gharaunda in the northern state of Haryana, India, November 9, 2021. — Reuters
