Pakistan’s Smog Crisis And What China’s War On Pollution Teaches Islamabad |
The air in Lahore is again a poisonous mix, and the Air Quality Index (AQI) reached 301 in December, at dangerous levels that cover the city in a haze as PM2.5 concentrations skyrocketed to 211 μg/m³, more than 40 times the safe level established by the World Health Organisation. No better is Karachi, whose smoggy skies are competing with Lahore in the world pollution charts, as both cities topped global rankings in October 2025, in the midst of frenzied crop burning, brick kilns and diesel fumes. Pakistanis are paying with their lungs: asthma cases are on the rise; children are wheezing; and early deaths due to respiratory and heart diseases are piling up.
This is not a freak weather phenomenon but an artificial crisis, eerily similar to the airpocalypse of the early 2010s in China, when the skies of Beijing turned an apocalyptic grey, and PM2.5 regularly rose above 80 μg/m³. China at the time faced a reckoning, and it responded with a war on pollution that offers Islamabad a template for survival.
China’s transformation was revolutionary. In 2013, President Xi Jinping declared war on pollution, making clean air a national security priority. The subsequent Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan was a sledgehammer. Thousands of old coal-fired power plants were closed, particularly in the........