LAHORE:
Despite a growing series of clean air policies, Lahore’s smog crisis continues to deepen as weak implementation, poor interdepartmental coordination and ineffective public communication hold back meaningful action, experts warned during a seminar.
They warned that transportation remains the city’s biggest polluter, stubble burning persists despite subsidies, and citizens lack the incentives and infrastructure necessary to adopt low-emission mobility habits.
They stressed that without long-term planning and a shift from reactive measures to sustained enforcement and behavioral change, the air quality emergency in Punjab will only worsen.
Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) organized the seminar on smog mitigation, resilience and feasibility of carbon credits in collaboration with Rasta Competitive Research Grants Programme.
The event brought together researchers and policymakers to examine the worsening smog crisis, sectoral emissions and emerging behavioral pathways towards sustainable mobility in Lahore.
In her presentation, Dr Aqsa Shabbir highlighted that Punjab must move away from reactive measures (such as ad hoc lockdowns) and adopt long-term preventive strategies.
He said Lahore’s air quality had begun to deteriorate rapidly after industrial expansion in the 1990s, and that smog had become a recurring emergency in 2016.
Since then, 12 policy documents have been prepared, including the Punjab Clean Air Policy (2023), Climate Resilient Punjab Action Plan (2024) and Smog Control Strategy (2024-25), but weak implementation, inadequate monitoring and limited institutional capacity remain the biggest obstacles, he said.
Dr Shabbir said the transport sector contributes up to 83 per cent of Lahore’s emissions, followed by industry and agriculture. While initiatives such as vehicle inspection centers, fuel quality monitoring, and pro-EV policies look promising on paper, coordination gaps, particularly between the transportation and energy departments, are limiting progress.
