Daily Times

The experts at a panel discussion said there was need of a stakeholder collaboration and engagement of the government and civil society to come up with sustainable transport systems across the country to cope with spiking up risk of smog and air pollution.

This was stated by the experts at a jointly organized panel discussion by Institute of Urbanism (IoU), Heinrich Boll Stiftung (hbs) and Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on “Sustainable Urban Transportation for Smart Cities in the Developing Countries” on the 2nd day of 25th Sustainable Development Conference (SDC2022) held alongside UNESCAP’s 6th South and Southwest Asia High-level Political Forum and Policy Dialogue on SDGs. The 4-day conference is being held in Islamabad from 5-8 December 2022.

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr Ejaz Ahmed, Senior Programme Fellow, Institute of Urbanism (IoU). Speaking on the occasion, Ayesha Majid, Programme Coordinator, IoU presented a case study from Islamabad conducted by the institute to gauge the urban mobility and transport landscape of the capital. She said the Transport Sector in Pakistan and its footprint accounts for 22.3% of the services sector of GDP and 6% of employment and comprises 30% of the total energy use of the country.

She also underlined that there had been a steep increase in motorization, the highest rate, in Islamabad that has resulted in rising parking issues with more cars, loss of green cover due to the expansion of road infrastructure and misuse of greenbelts.

Muhammad Umar, Assistant Manager Mechanical at Punjab Mass Transit Authority said the Authority is the pioneer of mass transit projects in the country which is currently running four Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in major cities of Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Multan. He recommended that implementation of distance based fares, park and ride facility, bicycle sharing, renewables energy resources like electric and hybrid buses, non-fare Revenue generation, transit orient development meaning maximize residential, business, and leisure spares within walking distance of public transport etc will help ensure the BRT system to proposer in the urban mobility landscape.

Dr. Mohsina Zubair, Director Labs, Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) said there smog season prevailing across the country. However, the sustainable transport has a great impact on environment as it reduces emissions and lowers the impact on ecology. There have been antismog squads created by the Islamabad Capital Territory Administration that are deputed to check the stacks of factories and industrial plants to contain smog.

Maryam Shabbir Abbasi, Senior Research Associate at SDPI said there was huge public outrage in smog season and particularly the situation in Lahore was not good. The governments have made efforts but all have failed to address the air pollution. She noted that the reasons for governments’ failure are the government and private sector competition of data authenticity, 18th amendment disconnect between policy and response, coordination issues at federal and provincial ministries, emergency responses to the issue and lack of human resources at the Environmental Protection Departments level.

Zainab Naeem, Researcher at SDPI briefed the participants on Urban Climate Resilience and Development in Pakistan. She was of the view that over 4.3 billion population is living in urban areas around the world. However, the number was projected to increase with a surge to occur in developing countries in the global south by 2050.

She suggested that the region was experiencing climate emergency and needed to strengthen service expansion and nature-based solutions to improve situation in the urban centers. Dr Axel Harneit-Sievers, Director, Heinrich Boll Stiftung (hbs), Asia Global Dialogue Office, Hong Kong as chair the panel discussion. He said in Pakistan there is difficulty in switching to gas-based cars from oil-based to reduce emissions whereas it can explore electric vehicles as a solution. Moreover, there was also a need to observe the power mix of the country for assessing the areas causing rise in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.