Stories written by Kulsum Ahmed

Greening Economic Growth

When I hear people in Pakistan talk of how we really need to focus on economic growth now and on cleaning up later, I cannot help thinking about the Mexican finance secretary’s reaction in 2000 when he heard that environmental degradation was costing his country about nine per cent of gross domestic product per annum. I still remember him holding up one hand and pointing the other hand downwards and summing it up as (to paraphrase): you mean we are pushing the country up through our policies to promote growth with one hand, and pulling it down, through environmental degradation, with the other hand?

Choosing to Breathe Clean Air

Karachi's air is more polluted than Beijing. Think about it. All the clues have been there for many years — my mother-in-law constantly on oxygen or using an inhaler in Karachi, my children using inhalers or taking anti-allergy tablets. But as a scientist, my light bulb moment only happened when I saw a graph in the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s Global Outlook report for 2016, which showed Karachi next to Beijing, but higher on the pollution scale. The IEA’s report was on air pollution because, as the report’s foreword notes, “energy production and use is the most important source of air pollution coming from human activity.” I cannot get that graph out of my head.



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