Under the Higher Education Commission (HEC), universities are playing a pivotal role in resolving environmental issues in the country.
In this regard, collaboration with leading American and British universities has been established to undertake joint research projects throughout the country.
Pollution in Pakistan is a major environmental and economic concern, growing hastily with the increase in population, mainly due to poor pollution management, public awareness and weak enforcement of the environmental policies.
The major types of pollution in the country are air, water and solid waste pollutions. Solid waste burning, low-quality fuels, and the growing use of fuel-inefficient motor vehicles have contributed to air pollution that in some cities – such as Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Faisalabad etc has exceeded levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. As a result, human transformation of the environment is manifest in several problems. Population growth and poor water infrastructure have reduced per capita water availability from 53,000 cubic meters to 1,200 cubic meters, and heavy reliance on firewood has contributed to the world’s second highest rate of deforestation. Being a developing country with a limited budget, the effects of these pollutants are an aided burden on national health system and economy, says a press release issued here.
Under Pakistan-US S&T Cooperation Program, a number of research projects have been initiated including: “Bioremediation of Chromium and Arsenic from Industrial Wastewater”, between University of Punjab and University of Oklahoma.
The purpose of this project is to clean contaminants with microbes and it was found that by identifying new natural resources for extracting heavy metals from industrial effluents and by opening new ways to decontaminate the affected soils wastewater and bring them back to full productivity. Another project “Ambient air quality monitoring using integrated secure wireless sensor and vehicular networks” has been initiated between UET Pakistan and University of Michigan Dearborn USA with the objective to assess the severity of the environmental pollution. A project between UET Lahore and University of Wisconsin-Madison USA tilted, “Determination of Heavy Metals and PAHs in airborne particulars in Lahore, Pakistan, and Madison, WI, USA”, is focusing to find the amount of pollution in the Lahore and helping to find the relationship between pollutants and their effect on public health. Another project “Association of Particulate Matter with Daily Morbidity in Urban Populations” between Aga Khan University Karachi and Environmental Health Sciences University at Albany USA has been undertaken with the motto ‘clean air for better lives’, this study has profound impacts on various fields of education and also has enabled collaboration with different institutes and industries that has led to a better understanding of ill-effects of polluted air.
