Pollution has become a regular issue in the countries of the Indian subcontinent in recent times. India has taken the matter seriously. The country has termed various types of pollution as 'transboundary' issues. Besides, the country has expressed interest in working jointly with two neighbors Pakistan and India to prevent this pollution, especially air pollution.
According to the report of the Indian media Telegraph India, on the second day of the ongoing World Climate Conference COP-29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in a meeting organized by the Prime Minister of Bhutan, Tshering Tobagh, among the 8 countries covered by the world's longest cryosphere zone (the large area of frozen water is called the cryosphere). Ministers and heads of delegations of six countries sat in the meeting.
The meeting highlighted various issues related to India's air pollution in the Indo-Gangetic airshed (a common flow cycle), the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development said in a statement on Wednesday.
In the meeting, Naresh Pal Gangwar, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change of India, said, 'Most of our countries fall under the same airshed—that is, the Indo-Gangetic airshed. It (air pollution) is a transboundary problem. All countries must work together to combat air pollution.' Naresh Pal particularly urged Pakistan and Bangladesh to take proactive, cooperative steps in transboundary air pollution management and mitigation, the statement said.
Earlier, a senior government official in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, said Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had expressed interest in visiting the country to work with India's Punjab province to tackle the severe air pollution problem. Recently, Lahore and India's capital Delhi topped the list of the world's most polluted cities.
Raja Jahangir Anwar, secretary for environment and climate change in Pakistan's Punjab province, told Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based media outlet, that Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz will soon send a letter to the Chief Minister of Indian Punjab (Bhagwant Singh Mann). He expressed his desire to visit India and also invited him to visit Pakistan.
It should be noted that the Male Declaration is the only existing intergovernmental framework to combat air pollution in South Asia. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka jointly signed this declaration in 1998.
According to an IQAir report released in April 2023, South Asia is the most severely polluted region in the world. Bangladesh, Pakistan and India had the worst air quality last year. A recent study by the UK-based medical journal Lancet reported that 1.6 million people died in India in 2021 due to air pollution.
