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Last month, the Swiss group IQAir compiled and analyzed data from 14 regional monitoring stations to declare Pakistan’s capital, Lahore, the world’s most polluted city. This came as a shock to the country, with Lahore’s air quality index (AQI) score as high as 1,165. It then increased to a staggering 1900.
Lahore is not alone in its pollution crisis. India and Pakistan both continue to experience severe air pollution crises. As the month passed, New Delhi took Lahore’s place as the city with the world’s worst air pollution, with predicted scores rising to 1,081.
Any AQI score over 300 is considered “hazardous.”
In recent years, smog has increasingly appeared in India and Pakistan during the winter months, caused by vehicular traffic, stubble burning, and industrial pollutants. It is important to acknowledge that smog is a human security issue. There are surging reports of people lining up for emergency care, complaining of discomfort and an inability to live properly in smog-struck opaque spaces. People on the frontlines – those whose occupations demand them to be outdoors, including daily wage laborers, construction workers, and migrants – face the brunt.
Authorities in Delhi have deployed the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP-4) to contain the smog. The plan includes banning diesel generators, limiting vehicular traffic, and school closures. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s officials have convened a “smog war room,” a multi-agency approach with technical leaders to address the smog and adaptation efforts. Both efforts are too little, too late; the worsening smog is a governance shortcoming. Article 21 of India’s Constitution broadly provisions a right to a healthy environment, while Pakistan adopted environmental well-being in its Article 9A, the right to life.
As both sides of the India-Pakistan border are experiencing this worsened air pollution crisis, calls for cooperation have gained momentum. Experts are increasingly hopeful that this shared crisis can spark a diplomatic revival, but both sides are nevertheless left grappling with historically turbulent ties.
Strides in China-U.S. climate diplomacy highlight that climate can provide a bridge in otherwise sour international relations. Comparing the successes and failures of two largest carbon emitters with India-Pakistan ties can offer significant lessons.
Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum, explained how China and the United States increasingly see combating climate change as a responsibility. China’s actions were driven by the understanding that worsening climate and extreme weather events negatively affect economic and security outcomes. They were “building a partnership against a common issue and co-benefits,” according to Turner. As such, India and Pakistan must recognize smog and climate change as a common enemy and a “threat multiplier.” The exacerbating smog threatens human security and can impact international security in a region that is already politically unstable.
This is playing out already in the context of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which until recently, had been a model of transboundary cooperation between the two neighbors. However, recurrent calls for renegotiating aspects of water sharing due to changes in climate, national security, and strategic concerns have reinvigorated tensions. The IWT renegotiations reflect a fragility attached to transboundary treaties as the availability of resources changes.
The smog is just an offshoot of larger and overlapping regional challenges.
“Climate security concerns will intensify in both countries, and the stakes of ensuring the IWT will work will go up. That’s where the merits of bilateral diplomacy are clear,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center. The worsening security concerns and human conditions across the climate-vulnerable Himalayan region underscore the need for data sharing and strengthened regional cooperation. Both countries must use this opportunity to herald a period of peace and cooperation against a larger enemy — climate change.
“More people die because of air pollution in India and Pakistan than on the border, and that should be cause enough” to cooperate, highlighted Rafay Alam, a renowned Pakistani environmental lawyer.
The China-U.S. example also shows that political will is crucial for advancing such diplomatic ties. This played out as climate action gained momentum in the United States in the early 2000s because of former Vice President Al Gore’s leadership and advocacy for international partnerships. Cooperation fostered through the continued efforts between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping in the 2010s led to the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, the first Donald Trump presidency significantly derailed climate goals and limited partnerships with China. President Joe Biden revitalized the stagnant relations with the 2023 Sunnylands Agreement to enhance cooperation on climate action, but Trump’s reelection this year has again left the world with ample ambiguity on the outlook for climate action.
For India and Pakistan, combating climate change is not a party politics issue, signifying that the two can cooperate despite changes in administration. Pakistani Punjab’s Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif extended requests to discuss matters with her Indian counterpart, the chief minister of India’s Punjab, Bhagwant Mann, on more than one occasion. She emphasized that wind does not recognize boundaries.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar visited Islamabad in October 2024 for the Shanghai Corporation Organization (SCO) summit, one of the first such visits in nine years. His visit marked a significant step ahead in revitalizing ties, as he emphasized the importance of regional cooperation. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had also called for peace and regional cooperation.
There is evident skepticism on the merits of smog diplomacy between India and Pakistan, largely rooted in unresolved issues such as Kashmir and terrorism. To address this lack of trust, the example of China-U.S. climate diplomacy highlights that while larger policy issues can lead to uncertainties and weaken bilateral ties, diplomatic efforts on neutral topics can be instrumental. For example, financial exchanges were often left off the table, with more focus on agriculture technologies and climate policy. Similarly, in the case of India and Pakistan, the dialogue can be limited but herald a period of discussions for mutual gains deterring long-standing tension.
“Air pollution diplomacy might not produce results, but I think it is a confidence-building mechanism that can open up other areas of discussion,” Alam said. Similarly, Kugelman emphasized, “Any discussion – sharing stories, steps to take – is a net positive, moving the needle for further cooperation on combating climate change.”
To begin with, climate diplomacy efforts between India and Pakistan can include air pollution and adaptation mechanisms, innovating affordable alternatives to stubble burning, air pollution data sharing, technical cooperation, and policy processes. Domestic efforts to combat smog must include accelerating clean energy deployments, improving public transportation and mobility, as well as accelerating EV deployment through technology-push and demand-pull policies.
Additionally, India and Pakistan are on their paths to net-zero emissions, but coal remains at the heart of the problem, generating electricity and fueling industrial processes. The carbon emitted from these thermal power plants and refineries is far more hazardous than the stubble-burning emissions. Yet at the beginning, these structural and long-term changes can be left off the table too.
Existing intergovernmental forums can be instrumental in promoting larger bilateral and regional climate diplomacy and adaptation efforts between India and Pakistan. For instance, the Malé Declaration on the Control and Prevention of Air Pollution can also be reinvigorated. The forum was initiated for South Asian regional cooperation involving eight countries including India and Pakistan, but the progress has been slow in recent decades. Similarly, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) can provide a neutral space for the two countries to advance smog diplomacy efforts if the organization can be revived.
India-Pakistan smog diplomacy interests can also bloom into new phases of regional climate security dialogues. The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is active enough to promote climate inclusivity and resilience in the Himalayan region. As a knowledge center, it provides for politically neutral and technical dialogues on combating climate change in the Himalayan belt.
Despite the strategic competition, bilateral cooperation between the U.S. and China-based think tanks, NGOs, and educational institutions remained a significant linkage, fostering knowledge sharing and technology transfer. As such, Kugelman highlighted that in the case of India and Pakistan, while bilateral and intergovernmental diplomacy can be slow and stagnant, “there is space for Track 2 diplomacy” where civil society-based platforms and forums can encourage scientific expertise and collaboration of both nationalities to pursue climate diplomacy discourse.