Breathing Inequality: Why Pakistan's Air Pollution Crisis is a Silent Class War

ckinitiative
Jul 7, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Jul 21, 2025

Credits: Mahrosh Usman (Climate Researcher)

How does air pollution in Pakistan disproportionately affect low-income and marginalized communities, and what systemic inequalities are fueling this environmental injustice?

Introduction

“Globally, air pollution cuts more years off the average life than smoking, car accidents, and terrorism combined.” (AQLI -University of Chicago). In Pakistan, the impact is even worse-air pollution shortens average life expectancy by up to 3.9 years.. Picture waking each morning to a smoggy skyline, throat burn, and a coughing youngster in the corner of a single-room residence. This is reality for millions of poverty-afflicted Pakistanis. Air pollution in Pakistan has gradually emerged as one of the most significant environmental disasters of our time. One of the worst in the world regarding air quality, cities in Pakistan now regularly record air quality index (AQI) levels several times beyond WHO safety levels. But this is the invisible reality: not all do inhale this toxic air in the same manner. Pakistan’s air pollution nightmare is the silent class war, where the poor choke and the elite distance themselves at arm’s length through purifiers, power, and policy gaps.

Background

In Pakistan, this smog crisis has been decades in the making. The combination of reckless urbanization, fossil fuel dependence, crop burning in Punjab, coal-powered power, and emissions by millions of unscreened vehicles has rendered the air unbreathable. In 2023 alone, major cities' AQI has continuously gone above 400+ in winter, and PM2.5 has gone above WHO safety levels by 14 times and more. In 2019, the National Clean Air Program and the 2022 Clean Air Plan attempted tackling these areas-but fell short because of weak enforcement, lack of funding, and elitist urbanization agendas.

Present-Day Effects

According to Fair Finance Pakistan, air pollution claims an estimated 128,000 lives each year in Pakistan (Human Rights Watch, 2023).In Punjab, over 11 million children under age five are consistently exposed to toxic air, putting them at risk of lifelong respiratory illness (UNICEF/AP, 2024). Rural communities, which already lack access to clean cooking technologies, are in turn subjected to chronic household pollution exposure. Brick kiln workers, street vendors, rickshaw drivers, and day-wage workers breathe in poison as they work. At the same time, affluent individuals escape smog months by relocating to hill stations or buy expensive air filters for homes, schools, and workplaces.

Systems of Injustice

This is not merely an environmental crisis-it’s a decades-old socio-economic one. The elite have clean power, private health care, and political influence. Working-class communities often live near pollution hotspots-industrial estates, highways, and open-burning waste sites-where exposure is highest (BMC Public Health, 2024). For decades, the state has subsidized urban access lines for power and gas for industry and wealthy neighborhoods and ignored village electrification and connectivity for slums. There are clean air laws, but there’s no real enforcement in working-class areas. The poor pay in lung tissue; the wealthy pay to opt themselves out. “Over 11 million children under age five in Punjab breathe air so toxic, it puts them at risk of lifelong illness before they even learn to speak.”(UNICEF/AP, 2024)

Solutions / Calls To Action

Solutions must be grounded in justice:

Enact national air quality standards that align with WHO’s 2021 revised limits, which Pakistan’s current policies still fall short of meeting.
Install air quality monitoring stations in all provinces.
Provide clean cookstoves and fuel to households in the countryside.
Invest in clean public transportation for the urban poor.
Transition off coal and replace brick kilns with cleaner technologies that feature worker protections.
Build grassroots support and push for court battles in favor of environmental justice.

They have proven in Lahore, Karachi, and Multan that tomorrow's generation will not keep quiet in waiting. Civil society groups and social media forums like PakistanAirQuality (PAQ) are gradually altering the narrative. Systemic change, however, needs policy, investment, and political will.

Conclusion

It's as much a health emergency in Pakistan as it is a human rights issue. This quiet emergency is a mirror held up to this stark injustice between groups that breathe effortlessly and groups that do not. If there's any means by which we can address climate injustice, clean air must be recognized as a right and never as a privilege.

Your Voice Matters: Act Now with CKI

You don’t need to wait for change-it can be initiated by you. CKI’s Climate Ambassador Program empowers active volunteers like you with materials and resources to conduct awareness drives, mobilize youth activists, and yes, call government officials demanding improved air quality laws. And with the CKI Climate Enrichment Program, you can collect donations for the benefit of local non-profit organizations serving directly affected communities impacted by pollution. One voice or one hundred, each action can make all the difference has the potential to clear the air for future generations.