ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam Tuesday said Lahore city has been ripped off 70 percent of its green cover in the last decade as the city of garden has turned into a concrete giant in the name of development.
He expressed his views during the Air Quality Asia (AQA) Conference organized on the parliamentary role in meeting the clean air challenge.
Amin said that it was high to realize the level of pollution we were bearing with, however vehicular emissions left at large, unrestrained industrialization and brick kilns were spewing dark emissions were the major perpetrators of bad quality air.
Pakistan Clean Air Programme (PCAP), he said was a very ambitious project which was deferred after 18th amendment which if had got implemented then the present day smog and polluted ambient situation would have been avoided.
The Prime Minister aide on Climate Change criticized the non-calibrated air quality data provided by private sources and faulty satellite imagery depicting Pakistan the second most polluted country in the world with alarming ratios of serious air pollutants. “The satellite imagery is not complying with the ground reality and also the gadgets used by privately managed air quality monitoring are cheap and not up to the mark hence their data is not accurate and reliable,” he noted.
He said that the country did not collect 60 percent of its solid waste which was ultimately dumped openly whereas 90 percent of its liquid waste was flushed untreated into the major water streams and reservoirs creating formidable repercussions.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in its recent report also mentioned transport sector causing serious environmental deterioration, he added. Amin mentioned that Pakistan was on the verge of shifting to Electric Revolution gaining momentum in the world. The ministry of climate change was aggressively working on devising a framework to introduce the project across the country which was on the cards, he added.
