Foreword

For three decades, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has recognised the right to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right to life under Article 9 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973. This judicial recognition began in 1994 with the landmark Shehla Zia case,1 which was to become a cause célèbre for future generations. This legal principle is more critical than ever, as Pakistan now confronts one of the greatest environmental threats to human health: air pollution causes an estimated one in every nine deaths worldwide.2 The threat is particularly acute in South Asia,3 home to the four most polluted countries in the world and 22.9% of the global population.

Constitutional Courts in Pakistan have played a significant role in combating environmental crises and climate change. Three decades after Shehla Zia, the same Court in the Amer Ishaq case4 coined the term ‘environmental constitutionalism’ to embody the fusion of fundamental rights and the environment. This principle establishes the environment as a proper subject for protection in constitutional texts, to be vindicated by constitutional courts worldwide. The Court also noted that this concept has its ideological roots within Islamic environmentalism. It is this triple-planetary crisis; climate change, biodiversity loss, and widespread pollution; that calls for entrenching environmental concerns as supreme constitutional norms.5

In the past three decades, the Courts realised that they required skills in environmental science, technology, health, natural science and economics to adjudicate upon environmental issues. This led to the idea of Commissions—a mere fact-finding body and its evolution to a broad-based forum comprising technical experts, government, academia and members of the civil society to propose sustainable solutions to environmental issues. What the commissions do, the courts cannot. The constitution of a Clean Air Commission in 2003 by the Lahore High Court in the Lahore Air Pollution case was not only a significant step towards actualising the issue of air pollution in Lahore but it also paved the way for the constitution of more commissions to address issues of environmental and climate justice.

Moving forward, it is time to humanise the environment and give it a voice of its own.

‘Unveiling Pakistan’s Air Pollution: A National Landscape Report on Health Risks, Sources and Solutions’ provides a comprehensive framework for addressing the issues of air pollution that Pakistan faces and will face in the future due to climate change. It should serve as a ‘living document’ to address emerging concepts and issues in the ever-evolving science of climate change.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah Senior Puisne Judge, Supreme Court of Pakistan