In the News
February 6, 2025
THE Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayan foothills straddling Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Pakistan are increasingly getting a bad rap as the global hotspot of air pollution.
Home to over two billion people who breathe air that is considered unsafe by the WHO, nine of the world’s 10 cities with the worst air quality are in South Asia. A combination of everything — tailpipe emissions, crop residue-burning, chimneys spewing deadly fumes from industries and power plants, and smoke from stoves fired by cow dung or wood — is responsible for millions of premature deaths each year.
To combat air pollution, we must first understand PM2.5 — the minuscule particles that fuel it. At just 2.5 micrometres, they’re far thinner than a strand of human hair and only visible under an electron microscope. These tiny particles can travel vast distances, defying boundaries.
Delhi, with an annual concentration of 98.6 micrograms of PM2.5 particles per cubic metre, Lahore 80 µg/m³, Dhaka 70.2 5.0 µg/m³and Kathmandu 49.95.0 µg/m³, allhave levels higher than the safe air quality threshold of 5.0 µg/m³ set by the WHO, and which countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden have been able to attain. The Air Quality Life Index’s 2024 report states that the average person living in South Asia would gain 3.5 years in their lives if WHO guidelines are met.
While it may be challenging to reach WHO levels, South Asia aspires to keep the annual average PM2.5 concentration below 35 µg/m³by 2035.
Ali Moeen Malik believes Pakistan can leapfrog towards attaining cleaner air by 2035. Co-founder of the startup ezBike, he says the answer lies in popularising electric vehicles. With surplus electricity, if Pakistan can retrofit the nearly 30m petrol-powered motorbikes and convert them into e-bikes, cities in Pakistan can reduce CO2 levels in the air by over 50 per cent, since “motorbikes are the biggest polluters in the transport sector”. With over 40,000 e-bikes across Pakistan, he is confident the number can double by next year with a little hand-holding and oodles of will on the government’s part.