South Asia’s Pollution Crisis Is a Cross-Border Problem

The Hindu festival Diwali is traditionally a time when families come together, but for the past seven years, Vamika Grover, 32, has fled her home in Delhi as fireworks pushed the city’s air quality to dangerous levels. Even after a week, you come home to enjoy the taste and smell of the pungent air.

“I’ve been feeling short of breath for the past few years, and I feel like my lungs are going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting,” said Grover, a Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor. “Earlier, I felt that firecrackers during Diwali worsened the air quality, but it has become polluted all year round now, causing health problems for everyone.”

The Indian capital has reported alarming air pollution since October, with the air quality index routinely exceeding 300 – three times higher than the generally safe limit of 100 – which is equivalent to smoking about 11 cigarettes a day. In late October, a top Indian pulmonologist advised people with chronic lung or heart diseases and those who could afford them to “leave Delhi” for six to eight weeks.

International monitoring platforms have often recorded dangerous levels exceeding 1,000 in parts of Delhi over the past few months, although the government app caps pollution readings at 500, a limit that was set when the national index was launched in 2014.

The scenes of buildings shrouded in smog echo the scene in Beijing a decade ago, when the Chinese capital’s pollution crisis made international headlines. But while China treated the moment as a national embarrassment and moved aggressively to improve air quality in the capital, India has largely succeeded in normalizing the crisis. The government continues to downplay its danger, questioning Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s global standards and data on air pollution-related deaths.

However, it is not only the capital where people are suffocating. Ghaziabad was ranked as the most polluted city in India in November, followed by Noida, Bahadurgarh and Delhi, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an independent international research organisation.

“Residential biomass, industries, power plants, transportation and construction dust are the main sources of pollution in Delhi and its surrounding areas,” said Manoj Kumar, air pollution and energy sector analyst at CREA team in India. Foreign policy. “Winter air pollution in north India is prominent due to several meteorological factors, but the rest of the seasons are also polluted due to high base emission loads. It is not a seasonal problem but a year-round problem across South Asia.”

South Asia is home to some of the most polluted countries in the world. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Nepal were among the top 10 countries with the worst concentrations of PM2.5 – tiny particles harmful to human health – in 2024, according to Swiss air monitoring company IQAir.

Air pollution causes an estimated two million premature deaths annually in the region, and efforts to improve air quality could save the lives of more than 750,000 people annually, according to a 2023 World Bank report. About 60% of the population lives in areas where “dust particles exceed less stringent air quality standards set by the World Health Organization.”

Pollution from residential cooking with solid fuels, such as wood and coal; waste burning; industrial emissions and vehicle emissions; Accidental forest fires are the main contributor to air pollution in South Asia. He added that local emission sources, meteorology and airfall effects create a regional effect, leading to occasional spikes in PM2.5 and worsening pollution.

“Cities are more polluted due to migration from rural areas and associated human activities,” he said. “Over the past decade the air has never been cleaner, pollution levels have risen sharply, and are even more pronounced today due to improved monitoring and increased awareness.”

Major cities in South Asia have added monitoring networks over the past decade, although analysts point out that many stations are clustered mostly in urban areas. India has 966 operating stations in 419 cities but only 26 in rural areas. Nepal’s 30 stations provide partial coverage.

Bangladesh has 31 stations, only 16 of which provide regular data, while activists in Pakistan say monitors lack access to all parts of the country. The high costs of installing accurate monitoring devices continue to limit a comprehensive network in many cash-strapped South Asian cities.

Authorities in Delhi and the Pakistani province of Punjab have faced accusations of tampering with pollution data, as videos from the Indian capital showed water sprinklers intended to monitor devices to reduce readings.

“No money has been allocated, and any money spent is spent on fog and smog cannons, which are completely ineffective and clearly not working,” said Ahmed Rafi Alam, a Pakistani environmental lawyer and clean air activist.

Smog cannons spray fog to disperse pollutants, although experts question their effectiveness in reducing air pollution.

Pollution in South Asia is itself transboundary, moving across cities, states and countries. Studies suggest the region is awash in long-range pollutants, largely transported from within South Asia itself, including smoke from burning crop residue and industrial emissions. The researchers also point out that the region’s massive mountains act as a barrier, blocking fresh winds and trapping pollutants, turning the Indo-Gangetic plain and Himalayan foothills into a “giant, narrow bowl” of pollution.

In Kathmandu, 17 percent of pollution comes from other parts of Nepal and 14 percent from other countries, according to a 2025 World Bank study. In the Terai region bordering India, PM2.5 pollutants from high-emitting countries in the Indo-Gangetic Plain account for about 68 percent of its pollution.

Ahmed Kamrozman Majumder, head of the Dhaka-based Center for Atmospheric Pollution Studies, said polluted air flowing into Bangladesh from other countries is significantly worsening the air quality. Stubble burning in northern Indian states is increasing pollution in northwestern Bangladesh, including Dhaka, while emissions from power plants in the Indian states of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha are exacerbating the problem. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury reach Bangladesh even from 1,200 to 1,900 miles away in China’s coal-based industrial areas.

“When air pollution in neighboring countries increases, Dhaka’s air pollution also increases proportionally. Our research shows that at least 10 to 15 percent of Bangladesh’s annual air pollution comes from neighboring countries,” Majumder said.

Pollution threatens the entire ecosystem in the region, contributing to the formation of brown clouds in the atmosphere, which contain pollutants such as nitrates, dust, fly ash particles and black carbon.

Studies show that black carbon – also called a “super pollutant” – has greater warming power than carbon dioxide and could pose serious threats to the Himalayan ecosystem. When black carbon settles on snow and ice, it darkens its surface, causing it to absorb more sunlight and melt faster. Experts warn that it accelerates the risks of glacial lake floods, loss of agricultural production, and other environmental consequences, such as disruption of seasonal rainfall, for communities downstream.

ICIMOD’s Tiwari, who collaborates with governments of eight countries in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, says a cross-border approach is crucial to tackling the region’s air pollution crisis.

“Countries need to build strong national air quality management plans, institutional strengths and financing mechanisms,” he said. “Then we can talk about regional cooperation.”

Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan all have their own national air pollution control mechanisms, but analysts say a paradigm shift in institutional capacity and governance is needed to achieve real progress. In the 2025 Good Government Index, published by the Singapore-based nonprofit Chandler Governance Institute, all four South Asian countries scored poorly — Pakistan ranked lowest among the four, followed by Nepal, Bangladesh and India.

Pakistan’s National Clean Air Policy 2023 aims to improve fuel quality, control industrial emissions, and ban crop burning, but Alam says implementation has been minimal. He added that air pollution is still treated as a region-specific matter – limited to Punjab or cities like Lahore and Karachi – rather than as a national issue, and environmental management is not yet recognized as a governance priority.

“Federal policies are made when we do not even have data on air pollution in places like Balochistan and large parts of Sindh,” Alam said. “The cities we live in are trying to kill us, and as long as we misdiagnose the problem – and view it as a regional rather than a national issue – any policy initiatives we take will fail.”

In Bangladesh, the Clean Air Act, which was drafted in 2019 to tighten controls on pollution, has not yet been approved. Majumdar says this is due to low political priority, weak institutional coordination, pressure from industrial and economic groups, and budget constraints.

Meanwhile, Nepal launched its first National Action Plan for Air Quality Management in late August, as a more comprehensive effort to combat air pollution at the national level. Since 2008, the country has imposed anti-pollution duties on the sale of every liter of petrol and diesel, but there has been little transparency about how the $160 million raised so far has been used.

Regina Maski Piango, an air pollution expert and professor at the Central Department of Environmental Sciences at Tribhuvan University, says the fees could help fill funding gaps for clean air measures. However, air pollution has not been a top policy priority despite its seriousness and growing public awareness.

“We do not have coordination between the different sectors, which are the main cause of air pollution,” Masci Biango said. “We also lack proper source studies or setting targets to reduce pollution in dedicated sectors. We formulate air pollution management plans with a long list of measures, but they end up becoming like a wish list rather than taking concrete steps.”

In India, the 2019 National Clean Air Program set clear targets, including reducing levels of fine particulate matter by up to 40% by 2025-2026. However, the 2025 CREA report showed that of the 253 cities with 80 percent or more PM10 data, 206 still exceeded the national air quality standard. Authorities are using techniques such as anti-smog cannons, water sprinklers and cloud seeding of artificial rain, but experts like Kumar say these measures are clearly ineffective, with little being done to reduce vehicular and industrial pollution in and around Delhi.

“We must have accountability because without accountability there will be no progress,” Kumar said. “If only we implement all the action points of the National Clean Air Programme, Delhi will get clean air. This is not impossible.”

But until comprehensive measures are implemented, millions of residents will continue to suffocate in toxic air, while some temporarily flee, becoming “pollution refugees.”

Grover, who moved to Singapore with her partner in October, says breathing clean air no longer feels like a luxury, despite missing her home country.

“Even if I am far away, I cannot completely stay away from Delhi,” she said. “But even when we have to go back to India, we will not move to Delhi. If I have to choose my life and my health, I will not choose Delhi.”