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?

Kulsum Ahmed

Most finance ministers don’t think that environment is their business at all, but increasingly we are discovering that it is. Why do I say this? Economic growth is defined in most textbooks as “an increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services, compared from one period of time to another”. The value (rather than the quantity) of the goods and services is calculated based on current market value, adjusted for inflation and compared across time periods. The unit of measurement is either gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP). So, in effect, economic growth is viewed as a proxy for an increase in aggregate productivity.

Most economists will tell you that there are five main ways to generate long-term economic growth. The first is a discovery of new or better economic resources. The second is to create more jobs and to grow the labour force (Side note: women coming into the labour force, together with men, in many countries after the Second World War had a major positive effect on their economic growth. The Quaid clearly had this figured out. In a speech at Aligarh in 1944, he said “Another very important matter which I want to impress upon you, is that no nation can rise to the height of glory, unless women are side by side with you.”). A third is to increase investment in infrastructure and physical capital. Fourth is to create superior technology or products. And fifth is through increasing skills of labourers, and so increasing their productivity.

Most finance ministers don’t think that environment is their business, but we are discovering that it is.

What does all this have to do with environmental degradation? The latter affects citizens’ health, causing early deaths in some cases.

Indeed, according to the recent Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health’s report, almost one in four premature deaths in Pakistan is attributed to pollution. In other cases, it causes illnesses that prevent people from reporting to work. Finally, in Pakistan, repeated bouts of malnutrition and environmental diseases (such as diarrhoea) in children under the age of two years results in reducing children’s IQ levels and their educational and cognitive performance. All this taken together means that the country’s productivity is lowered rather significantly.

A case study on Pakistan in a World Bank book, Environmental Health and Child Survival, tried to estimate the cost of disease, using 2005 data, in terms of loss of productivity, early mortality and health costs associated with environmental factors, such as lack of clean water, inadequate sanitation, poor waste disposal, indoor and outdoor air pollution, vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, and problems arising from industrial chemicals and wastes. It also included malnutrition-mediated indirect effects of environmental risk factors. The estimated annual cost of direct and indirect impact of environmental risk factors for Pakistan came to almost 9pc of GDP per annum. In comparison, our annual GDP growth in 2005 was a high 7.7pc, according to World Bank data. Just think how much higher it could have been.

It seems to me that a major input to achieving greater economic growth, that we can directly affect, are our people. Clearly, a healthy and educated people lead to both a better workforce and budding entrepreneurs, so that old businesses can be more productive but also new businesses can generate jobs and superior technologies and products. So many countries focus on improving the pillars of health and education as they move up the development ladder from low- to middle- to high-income economies. In Pakistan, as in most other developing countries, environmental degradation is the third pillar of that stool, as it directly affects both health and education outcomes. In addition, pollution results in unnecessary healthcare expenditures, an expensive option for a country with insufficient budget.

Pakistan’s former finance minister, Shahid Javed Burki, often mentions that today’s Pakistan is a very young country, with more than 50pc of the population under the age of 25 years. By his calculations, in the cities, more than 75pc of the population are under the age of 25 years old. These youth, and their energy and enterprise, have the potential to raise Pakistan up. At the same time, it seems that we are holding them down, by lowering their productivity, because of poor air and water quality. Why can’t we improve the physical environment and green our economic growth? After all, it will only make our youth even more productive and our country even richer. Let’s not please ever say again that we have to grow first and clean up later.

The writer is an environmental sustainability and climate expert, and a former practice manager of the World Bank’s Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice.

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

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.

Kulsum Ahmed

Poor air quality increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and both chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma. Air pollution kills about eight million people annually, and is the fourth leading risk factor for premature deaths worldwide, costing the global economy about $225 billion in lost labour income in 2013, according to the World Bank. Even greater is the cost of illness, resulting in health costs and loss of productivity due to days off work. The highest cost is the agony of watching our children or parents suffer from diseases such as asthma and the loss of pride associated with living in a dirty city.

To tackle the pollution in our cities, we need to first acknowledge that we have an air quality problem.

However, many cities and countries have successfully addressed this problem. Mexico City made huge improvements by acting on vehicular pollution and Bogota by improving fuel quality. Others succeeded temporarily until investments were made that locked in a development path that did not take into account future pollution. In China’s case, it is the coal power plants that are a major source of air pollution. Therefore, in 2012, the Chinese government sought to remedy this by tightening emissions standards for their coal power plants ahead of many countries, including the EU. Thus, they were able to respond to their energy needs and protect the health of their citizens.

In order to tackle the pollution in our cities, we need to first acknowledge that we have an air quality problem and begin to share data regularly on air quality and emissions sources with citizens. Indeed, the right to a clean environment is already enshrined in our Constitution and confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Secondly, we need to identify the sources of pollution in each of our major cities using a fairly simple test where air is passed through a filter paper and the pollution sources analysed. These results are validated by comparing them with the outcomes of computer models that take into account emission source inventories and meteorological effects. Past analyses suggest that in the case of Karachi, industrial emissions (including from poor quality fuel oil), vehicular emissions, fossil fuel combustion, burning trash, and dust from construction, street cleaning, agricultural residues, and sea salt are important sources.

Third, we need to address as many of these sources as possible. In fact, it’s not that difficult. Just procuring diesel and fuel/furnace oil with lower sulphur content, reducing industrial emissions through use of cleaner technology, covering our construction sites, or putting in place a better waste management system so the burning of trash is avoided can make a huge difference.

Finally, we need to systematically think about future sources of pollution and put in place frameworks to manage these from now. Take the planned increase in coal power plants as an example. Recognising this as a future source of pollution, the federal environment protection agency could introduce new emissions standards for PM2.5 (which do not even exist currently in Pakistan) for coal power plants and adjust other emissions standards, learning from China. This will help to ensure that clean technology is used right from the start in these coal plants, reducing the risk of new plants worsening our air quality. Putting these standards in early will also help to ensure that investors do not have to face additional costs later for retrofitting these plants or even closing them down altogether.

As a concerned Pakistani, who has helped many other cities and countries address this problem, it really pains me to see the path that we are unwittingly following on air quality. We need to wake up. We should be defining our own future, a future where each Pakistani not only has the right to breathe clean air, but can actually do so. We can neither tolerate nor afford anything less, if nothing else for our children and our parents’ sake.

The writer was practice manager for the Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice and the senior-most Pakistani at the World Bank when she retired in October 2016.
Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2017

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan