Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has initiated a project with the Government of Punjab to identify the relationship between smog and the practice of crop residue burning practices by farmers in the rice wheat belt of Punjab.
An inception workshop for this initiative R-SMOG (Remote Sensing for Spatio-Temporal Mapping of Smog) was held at the FAO Representation in Islamabad .This workshop aimed at getting feedback from the partners and brainstorming in order to refine and improve the geospatial research.
Welcoming participants to the workshop, Ms Mina Dowlatchahi, FAO Representative to Pakistan expressed the hope that the fruitful deliberations of the experts in the workshop will bring extraordinary clarity into the issue that the Punjab government seeks to address.
Smog is a kind of visible air pollution that combines smoke and fog. There could be several factors causing this kind of visible air pollution such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, ozone, smoke or particulates.
Heavy smog loaded with pollutants covered major part of Punjab especially the city of Lahore in Pakistan. This Smog not only created serious health problems for the people of Punjab but also caused multiple road accidents and disrupted air traffic.
The Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab requested FAO to provide technical support to undertake a geospatial research to identify the relationship of smog to crop residue burning practices.
Dr.Muhammad Tariq, Director Barani Research Institute Chakwal thanked FAO for taking the initiative and said that the study will prove instrumental in moving forward to tackle pollutants in the air.
Represenatatives from the Department of Agriculture Punjab, Government of Punjab, officials from Ministry of Climate Change, SUPARCO, Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), specialists from academia and the project partners came together for this first consultation workshop.
R-SMOG will assist to generate scientific evidences to comprehend the situation in detail and to adopt adequate mitigation and adaptation strategies in the future. It would promote the development of appropriate strategies and necessary action plans.
Technical Cooperation Programme, R-SMOG is in line with the third priority area of country framework of FAO for Pakistan which relates to increased capacity of Government institutions related to Natural Resource Management (NRM) for design and implementation of the policies and strategies for integrated Natural Resource management and climate change adaption and mitigation.