Green, Green Rocky Road: The Perils of Greenwashing Pakistan

By rendering it a “technical problem”, Pakistan’s “greening” initiatives only exacerbate the country’s environmental crisis.

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China’s Ministry of Agriculture donated 12 agricultural drones and 300,000 litres of pesticide spray to Pakistan in July 2020 to combat the locust outbreak this year. Source: APP/CGTN via The Express Tribune

On March 2, 2019, Malik Amin Aslam, advisor to the prime minister of Pakistan on climate change, tweeted a satellite image from NASA that showed the increase in green areas across the world. He referred to the green areas in Pakistan as the “magic of the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation Project (BTTAP)”. The tweet received widespread appreciation, which was seen as an endorsement of the greening efforts by the government of Pakistan.

The image was taken from an article that appeared on NASA's website. NASA's study also found a mention in the redoubtable Nature Sustainability journal. However, it turned out that the greening in question was not the result of the BTTAP. According to the NASA study, Pakistan is not even among the top ten countries that lead “greening of the world”(China and India headed the list). In fact, the phrase “greening of the world” is misleading. As the NASA article reveals, greening was the result of increased food crops. It did not represent an increase in forest or green areas. Therefore, the greening only referred to an increased land area under cultivation in both China and India.

“Green has come to be synonymous with something good for the environment, which is not necessarily the case...”

Despite the tweet peddling a false claim, it had received 1,100 retweets and 3,900 likes at the time of writing. A bit of skepticism did come from some people who were concerned about the factual accuracy of the claim that the greening was because of Pakistan’s afforestation efforts. However, no flags were raised about the unproblematic use of “green”. Green has come to be synonymous with something good for the environment, which is not necessarily the case. In this context, an increase in crop area reflects change in land use. This could mean increased use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals that would deteriorate the environment. The unproblematic use of “green” overlooks and masks the contradictions of mainstream environmentalism, such as the questions of socio-political justice that are connected to environmental change.  In this essay, I make an argument that the nature of greening in Pakistan is focused merely on the technical aspects and divorced from its socio-political context. Furthermore, a technical framing is not capable of resolving environmental problems. Our only hope is to push for a structural and systemic change that address the root cause of environmental issues. 

The Greening of Pakistan: Underlying Assumptions

One of the most prominent features of greening in Pakistan is the optimistic outlook towards technology that underpins the majority of environmental initiatives in the country. This technological optimism is based on the idea of ecological modernization theory. One of the key aspects of the theory is that it makes environmental crisis appear “manageable” by reducing it to technical aspects that require managerial solutions. The technical aspects then can be resolved by advanced, efficient green technologies. These efficient green technologies produce less pollution and consume less resources. The argument goes that if green technologies were efficient enough, at least theoretically, sustainable development is achievable. Taken at its face value, it almost sounds like common sense. So, it should not come as a surprise that the ecological modernisation theory has become very popular among environmental managers, policymakers, corporations, NGOs and civil society organisations.

Climate Strike on 20th September 2019 in Lahore, demanding the release of The Hunza Five- who have been called the “political prisoners of the global climate crisis.”. Source: The Nation

“a focus on green technological optimism divorces environmental issues from their complex socio-political context”

There are multiple critical questions about the ecological modernization theory. First, a focus on green technological optimism divorces environmental issues from their complex socio-political context and reduces them to technical aspects.

The “green” technologies that appear to promote sustainability are still based on resource exploitation and value chains that run on fossil fuel, and the ever-increasing consumption of commodities. The result of the reductionist approach is that we have more advanced technologies today, yet the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere is 60% higher than the 1990s. One could argue that the green technologies allow the continuation of extractive activities by giving them a “green” face — an act of “greenwashing”.

Second, the amount of time needed for the reformism that ecological modernization requires to reach sustainable levels is simply not available. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to have a 66% chance of the temperature not rising above 1.5°C, there is a maximum available global carbon budget of 420 gigatonne of CO2 that can be emitted into the atmosphere. At the current rate of emissions, this carbon budget would be exhausted within a decade.

Seeing Smog in Lahore

Air pollution in Lahore has become “visible” through the smog that engulfs the city every year from November to February. Pointing to its annual return, some have called it the “fifth season”. In 2016, at the very start of the smog crisis, the blame was put on stubble burning by farmers in the region of Punjab across both Pakistan and India. The administrative response was to put a ban on stubble burning and file cases against farmers. For example, in 2019, the government of Punjab ordered a complete ban on stubble burning by imposing section 144 of the code of criminal procedure. In the two months of the imposition of section 144, between October and November, around 544 cases were registered against farmers. Interestingly, a higher amount of stubble is burned during the spring harvest compared to the autumn, yet the city is not impacted by smog in the summers. One of the related aspects of stubble burning is that it releases nutrients into the soil, and that also increases the capacity of the field to absorb more nutrients. Furthermore, stubble burning allows farmers to prepare the fields for the next sowing season.

The other major contributer of air pollution in Lahore and surrounding areas are the brick kilns. But, beyond the sources of pollution in the city, it is necessary to mention that Lahore is situated in an area that is very susceptible to episodes of smog because of a natural weather phenomenon called temperature inversion. Temperature inversion is a phenomenon in which the pollutants are trapped in the lower atmosphere that results in deteriorated air quality. According to Abid Omer, the founder of Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI), meteorological reasons exacerbate the pollution in Lahore during winters.

Vehicle population in Punjab. Source: Government of Punjab

The other part of the story is the tremendous increase in private vehicles, and the ensuing road infrastructure and urban development. From 2008 to 2016, the total number of vehicles in Punjab has increased from 3.5 to a staggering 16.2 million. The tremendous growth in the number of vehicles in the past few years is not included in pollution calculations. On top of rapid increase in the number of vehicles, low-grade fuel is used in Pakistan. Pakistan uses Euro-II grade fuel emission standards. These emission standards are about 23 years old. To put it in context, India uses Euro-V standards, Iran Euro-IV, Afghanistan Euro-III, and Nepal Euro-III. The only other country in South Asia that continues to use the same standards as Pakistan is Bangladesh (UN ESCAP, 2019). The non-availability of required data, though, makes it difficult to accurately predict the contribution of increased traffic and low-quality fuel. 

Another facet of air pollution is connected with urban development. For instance, on the one hand, mega-road infrastructure projects like the signal-free traffic corridors in Lahore are constructed to facilitate the fast movement of vehicles. On the other hand, an almost non-existent public transport system in a mega-city pushes people to buy more and more private vehicles. There are both pull and push factors urging people to buy their private vehicles. The signal-free corridors and rapid, uncontrolled urbanisation, in addition to the almost non-existent public transport infrastructure, point to “the city” that policymakers envision. The result is clear in the loss of green areas in the past few years in Lahore. The Punjab government’s Clean Air Action Plan reported a “… 72% loss of tree cover in the city in just eight years from 2007 to 2015.”

Tree cover in Lahore 2007, 2010 and 2015 [From left to right] . Source: Government of Punjab

The different facets put together reveal that the scourge of air pollution is a question of social justice and inequality. The poor are least protected against air pollution. They cannot pay for privatised air purification at homes. These aspects tell us that air pollution is not only a technical issue. The issue is connected with our life styles, consumption patterns, public transport, urbanisation and, ultimately, social justice and the people's right to the city.

“The different facets put together reveal that the scourge of air pollution is a question of social justice and inequality”

In conclusion, these aspects do not fit well with the government’s technology-oriented solutions, which focus on simplified and technical aspects of the problem. The response to these questions is not possible in technological, eco-modernist visions of a sustainable environment. Resolving the problem of air pollution in Pakistan requires structural and systemic change. It is imperative to move beyond technical aspects and marry environmental issues to their complex socio-political context. This applies not just to air pollution but other looming environmental crises as well.

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Usman Ashraf is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He is a political ecologist interested in conservation, environment, and climate change. His current research focuses on the politics of environment-development in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).