In Sahiwal, Punjab, one morning, a woman stood on the outskirts of her field, her finger pointing to the grey horizon. She didn't make a gesture towards the mountains. She was pointing at the smoke. It was a mere few kilometres from where she had been working as a farmer for three decades, growing cotton and wheat. It was there that the Sahiwal Coal Power Plant, one of the key projects in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, was built.

During my field research in 2019, she told me, "The sky was different before; all the birds had changed their patterns." This was not just a complaint from Safia; it was an exact ecological reading, the kind that communities embody before scientists get there with their instruments.

Over the past years, I have been doing research on industrial development, cultural heritage, and community life in Punjab and Sindh. But it's not just an environmental crisis — it's a heritage emergency, with an impact that's happening so subtly, so slowly, that it won't make the news. Yet, it will change the identity of millions of people forever.

In the middle sit two of the most marvellous gifts that man could have given to the world: the ancient cities of the Indus Civilisation, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, now amid coal emissions and catastrophic floods.

The findings of the research conducted in the area surrounding the Sahiwal plant show that groundwater depletion, carbon dioxide emissions, and heavy metal pollution (including lead, copper, and iron) have been measured, with measurable increases occurring within a 0–40 km radius around the plant.

From 2018 to 2021, health surveys reveal increasing rates of respiratory disease, skin disease, and eye irritation among local communities living closest to the plant. These are not numbers in the abstract. They are the lives lived by people who were never listened to — the farmers, the women, the children........

© The Friday Times