Ecological Nightmare in Lahore, Pakistan

Smog fills the Lahore skyline (2009) | Colin / Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Environmental crises are often narrated in statistics, satellite images, and policy briefings, but what they obscure are the intimate ways in which ecological collapse infiltrates daily life. In South Asia, climate change is not an abstract future—it is a suffocating present that shapes how parents care for their children, how workers breathe at their jobs, and how entire cities imagine survival. This is particularly evident in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, where each winter the onset of smog makes the simple act of stepping outside a hazard. What follows is both a personal reflection and a political reckoning: how one family’s curtailed morning ritual reveals the failure of governments to protect their citizens and why environmental justice is to be understood as a struggle over the fundamental conditions for a healthy and dignified life.

Every morning when we’re home in Pakistan, as soon as my son wakes up, he starts to chant baahir (“outside” in Urdu). When we’re ready to go, he claps his hands on the wooden door leading to the street. Outside, he gazes at a flock of birds in flight, or points toward an airplane overhead. I smile when he chases the neighborhood cats. But my favorite moment on our walks comes when the morning sunshine falls softly on his long eyelashes, creating striped shadows on his cheeks.

But on some days—with the advent of the smog season in Lahore, on most days—my son’s cry of baahir will be met with our front door firmly locked: The outside is dangerous for his developing lungs. When the air outside is most polluted, it is filled with soot and acrid smoke. When the city is fully shrouded, and the visibility outside drops to near zero, stepping out on foot or by car becomes dangerous. According to the World Air Quality Index, Lahore is one of the most polluted cities in the world, currently ranked as the world’s fifth worst. 

Studies indicate that air pollution shortens average life expectancy by 3 years in Pakistan and by 7 years in Lahore as the worst affected city. Smog is concentrated along major traffic arteries and industrial zones, where vehicles, brick kilns, and power generators release a cocktail of particulate matter such as PM2.5, PM10, and other toxic gases. Unregulated construction over green and agricultural land, stubble and waste burning, vehicular emissions, and a poor public transport system are chief drivers of Lahore’s air pollution. Poor governmental management is the smog’s root cause; due to lack of policy and enforcement, companies, factories, farmers, vehicle owners are undeterred in practices that cause air quality to deteriorate. This unchecked pollution hits home, forcing parents like me to rethink even the simplest moments—like letting a child step outside to feel the morning air. 

Childrens’ lungs are still developing, making them more vulnerable to respiratory diseases that can persist for life. Already, two of my nieces suffer from smog-induced asthma. They wake up coughing and wheezing in the middle of the night, their tiny faces hidden behind the green-tinged plastic mask of the nebulizer as they sleepily rub their eyes. UNICEF calculates that 12 percent of deaths among children under 5 in Pakistan are due to air pollution. 

Aware of this grim fact, I have limited my son’s outdoor activities. He basks in the sun beside a large living room window, where the gold minaret of the neighborhood mosque and the outline of surrounding houses flicker in the haze. Still, he knows it is not the same. He tugs at my sleeve, nudging me to take him outside. He is too young to understand why I won’t, and he slumps against the window in disappointment. 

And yet, we are lucky: Unlike many families in Lahore, we have access to masks and air purifiers. 

Many children from lower-income families live in poorly ventilated homes near high-traffic areas choked with toxic exhaust, making exposure unavoidable. Schools face emergency closures for weeks on end, causing an already debilitated education system to crumble further. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients suffering from smog-related respiratory issues, ocular diseases, and aggravated heart conditions. Lahore’s informal laborers —brick kiln workers, rickshaw drivers, and street vendors—cannot afford to stay indoors; to earn money, they must inhale poison. For many people in Lahore, smog is not just an environmental challenge: It is a threat to life. 

The tragedy is that this crisis has long been normalized. Parents send children to school in masks, doctors brace for the seasonal spike in patients, and businesses adjust schedules to account for low visibility. What should feel like an emergency instead feels like routine. This normalization reflects not resilience but resignation—a collective sense that the government responsible for protecting citizens has turned away from its duty. Government officials with the power to address this crisis offer excuses. 

When I asked about the largest causes of smog, a top official at the Punjab Environmental Protection Department—I will call him Ahmad to protect his real identity—described contributing meteorological factors like temperature inversion effect and direction of wind as “beyond our control.” According to Ahmad, the government assesses emissions from vehicles using the outdated “Ringelmann Smoke Chart,” which relies on visual judgment of smoke color rather than modern scientific methods. He acknowledged the lack of resources and infrastructure, noting, “We do not have the equipment or the HR to enforce compliance.”

Efforts to hold polluters accountable have been hampered by weak regulations and ineffective monitoring mechanisms. “If the Water and Power Development Authority isn’t monitoring its own emissions,” Ahmad says, “how can we expect the private sector to comply?” Pakistan has National Environmental Quality Standards, but the state is unable to enforce them. 

International frameworks, such as the Paris Agreement, have yet to make a difference on the ground. Ahmad points out that global initiatives often emphasize climate change over more localized issues like smog. A friend working in the development sector reports that senior environmental policymakers in meetings blame the ongoing emissions on municipal political bickering, as well as smog drifting across the border from nearby India. 

The result is that air pollution in Lahore is, if anything, growing worse. During the city’s frequent power outages, thick, black clouds swirl out of diesel generators. On the city’s outskirts, farmers burning fields adds smoke to the city’s rapidly growing number of cars—20 million at last count. The lack of a modern waste management system means agricultural and municipal waste is often incinerated, releasing harmful particulates, including PM2.5 and PM10, into the atmosphere. 

Situations like this are not unique to Pakistan. Around the world, right-wing governments have downplayed or outright denied climate change, prioritizing capitalist profit over environmental responsibility. Whether it is the United States’s withdrawal from international climate commitments or Brazil’s deforestation of the Amazon, governments and corporations have repeatedly sacrificed the planet for economic gain.

Yet the consequences of such policies are not confined within national borders. Air pollution and climate change are inherently transboundary problems, where emissions from one country often drift into another, worsening regional air quality. This interconnectedness underscores the need for cooperative solutions rather than fragmented national policies, especially in regions like South Asia, where geography, shared airsheds, and similar development pressures bind countries together.

When it comes to solving the smog problem in South Asia, only a collective approach will lead to cleaner air. In Delhi, India, just a few hundred kilometers away, a court-ordered smog control plan introduced measures like vehicle rationing, strict industrial regulations, and investment in public transport. A study conducted by experts on EGU found that while the number of vehicles almost doubled in Delhi, the implementation of cleaner technologies and stricter industrial regulation reduced particulate matter by an estimated 29 percent between 2011 and 2021. 

Though imperfect, Delhi’s example shows what happens when the government takes action. It’s not that solutions are impossible: The government could introduce subsidies for farmers and enforce an agricultural waste management system to reduce the burning of crop waste. A modern waste management system, where waste and byproducts are reintegrated into crop production, would be far cleaner than the current system. 

Above all, the fight against smog requires a cultural shift. At home in Lahore, we buy air purifiers, wear masks, and stay indoors—but these measures adapt to the crisis instead of solving it. I am guilty of this too. As I write this, my son naps next to me, and an air purifier hums in the corner of the room. Yet all I am doing is creating an illusion of safety inside my home. 

This bubble of inaction must burst if we are to enable our children to breathe freely beneath a clear blue sky.

An earlier version of this first appeared in BackMatter, the magazine produced by students in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at the New School for Social Research.