Arshad H Abbasi
CLIMATE change is no longer a warning for Pakistan—it is a lived nightmare.
Each year, our skies grow darker, our summers more unbearable, our floods more destructive. Cloudbursts now descend with ferocity, unleashing catastrophic floods and landslides across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu & Kashmir. These are not acts of God. They are the direct result of a man-made crisis. Scientists are clear: climate change is real, accelerating, and overwhelmingly caused by human activity. But in Pakistan, one of the most powerful yet overlooked drivers of this catastrophe is not just global greenhouse gas emissions, but something far closer to home: toxic air pollution born of dirty fuels, smuggling, and corruption.
For more than a decade, according to IQAir data from 2013 to 2024, Pakistan’s major cities have ranked among the most polluted on Earth. Lahore, once the city of gardens, has become the city of smog. Its winter skies are cloaked in a toxic haze, with PM2.5 levels soaring between 90 and 120 µg/m³—twenty-five times higher than the World Health Organisation’s safe limit. Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Faisalabad are not far behind, with pollution levels consistently marked “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy.” For ten years, millions have been forced to inhale poison. Yet the greater tragedy is this: that very poison is also destabilising Pakistan’s climate.
The science is grim. Polluted air is filled with aerosols—tiny particles that alter how clouds form and rain falls. Instead of producing steady rain, polluted clouds break into countless droplets, delaying rainfall in some areas while unleashing violent cloudbursts in others. The devastating floods of 2022, which drowned one-third of Pakistan and displaced 33 million people, cannot be separated from this reality. Air pollution is no longer just a health crisis; it has become the hidden engine of our climate catastrophe.
And yet, the causes are not mysterious. They are man-made, and they have names. The single biggest offender is vehicular emissions, powered by the dirtiest petrol and diesel in the region. While the world has moved to Euro-6 fuel standards, Pakistan still lags decades behind, burning toxic fuels laced with sulfur and benzene. Sulfur fuels create particulate matter that darkens the sky, poisons children’s lungs, and fuels erratic rains. This is not a technological failure. As far back as 2008, Pakistan committed to Euro-5, yet regulators—OGRA and the Ministry of Petroleum—chose inaction. Meanwhile, China and India moved ahead, upgrading to Euro-6. Pakistan instead, is choking on its refusal to act.
The tragedy deepens. Thirty to forty per cent of Pakistan’s fuel is illicit Iranian petrol and diesel, smuggled across borders, laced with extreme levels of sulfur, manganese, and xylene. Iran, crippled by sanctions, cannot upgrade its refineries, but Pakistan imports its poison anyway. It destroys engines, poisons citizens, costs us billions in lost taxes—and fuels the climate chaos tearing our nation apart. This is not mismanagement—it is an environmental crime.
Worse still, in the league of 193 nations, it is only in Pakistan where the heinous crime of mixing carbon dioxide into LPG to increase weight continues unchecked. Countless lives have been lost to exploding cylinders, and no one has been held accountable. Today, that same crime is poisoning our skies, driving the floods, smog, and heatwaves that threaten our survival. And what makes this unbearable is the contrast with India. While East Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat are seeing cleaner skies after adopting Euro-6 fuels, Pakistan sinks deeper into suffocation and chaos. How long can we blame others when we are poisoning ourselves?
This pollution has faces, names, and enablers. Every day, the transport sector pumps a deadly cocktail of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and carcinogens like benzene and toluene into the air. These gases not only kill silently through disease, but also trap heat, intensifying climate change. Every liter of petrol is laced with impurities. Every breath is contaminated with corruption.
I know because I tried to stop it. Alongside my son, an engineer, I designed a real-time digital monitoring system to track fuel quality across the supply chain. It could have stopped adulteration and saved lives. Instead, what did we receive? Threats, intimidation, and silence. The very regulators entrusted with protecting citizens, OGRA, became obstacles to reform. The adulteration mafia thrived. Pakistan continued to choke.
This is not fate. This is a choice. Pakistan can still act. It can upgrade its refineries to Euro-6 standards, slash emissions, and cut its contribution to climate change. It can mandate independent monitoring, with international oversight, so lobbies cannot regulate themselves. It can capture methane from agriculture and waste, transforming it into useful fuel instead of letting it fuel climate disasters. But it will not happen until the state chooses honesty over complicity.
Air pollution is the hidden driver of Pakistan’s climate collapse. It fuels the floods, intensifies heatwaves, and robs our children of their lungs and their futures. And yet we ask the world for billions in climate funds while selling poison at home. How can we ask for help abroad while refusing to clean our own skies?
This is not just an environmental issue. This is national survival. Each day of inaction means more children gasping for air, more homes washed away, more livelihoods burned by heat and drought. Pakistan is not just facing climate change—it is being destroyed by it. And air pollution is one of its greatest accelerators.
The choice is brutally clear. Either we act—cleaning our fuels, shutting down smuggling, enforcing accountability—or we continue on the path of suffocation, disaster, and collapse. There is no middle ground. The skies above us are already a warning. The floods beneath us are already a verdict. If Pakistan does not confront its pollution, it will lose its future.
The writer, an engineer, is contributing columnist based in Islamabad.
