Snow-capped peaks used to be clearly visible from the streets of Almaty and Bishkek, two of the largest cities in Central Asia that both lie in plains surrounded by mountains.
Yet now a heavy cloud of dark smog often blots out the view as air pollution regularly soars to levels comparable to those in New Delhi and Lahore, even though Almaty and Bishkek have fewer people and industries than their Indian and Pakistani counterparts.
In the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, a city of 1 million, and Kazakhstan’s second city of Almaty, which is twice as large, the onset of winter prompts a surge in pollution as people burn coal and other dirty fuels in stoves to heat their homes.
Photo: AFP
One of those monitoring the situation is Kunduz Adylbekova, a Kyrgyz environmental activist who experiences the problem firsthand. In the area of small private houses where she lives on the outskirts of Bishkek, the air quality is particularly bad.
“The air here has a kind of heavy feel,” said Adylbekova, a program manager at the nonprofit Archa Initiative.
Many locals use highly polluting stoves to heat their homes and boil water, because they are not hooked up to mains gas. Large numbers of aging vehicles exacerbate the situation.
In Adylbekova’s district, readings of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller — regularly reach levels that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines as hazardous to human health.
Sometimes readings are four times higher than the EPA minimum “hazardous” level, Adylbekova said, with locals suffering the ill effects.
“Residents are often ill, some suffer from lung problems,” she said.
The bowl-shaped topography of the two cities helps trap pollution.
Even worse, both have coal-fired power stations that date back to the Soviet era, but other factors have led to a massive increase in the smog problem over the past two decades.
In Almaty, where gleaming skyscrapers reflect the country’s oil wealth, many cite the huge growth in the number of vehicles since the breakup of the USSR.
Smog also afflicts the capitals of former Soviet republics to the south, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
While environmental groups have long sounded the alarm, now that people can easily access real-time air quality measurements online, pollution has become a talking point, particularly on social media.
However, governments have been slower to acknowledge the problem.
This month, an online petition demanding that Almaty’s authorities declare the poor air quality as an emergency gained 17,000 signatures on the first day.
The city administration responded by saying that it is looking into ways to modernize the main coal-burning power station to make it less polluting.
However, it said no decision on the upgrade would be made until the end of the year and ignored calls for an independent assessment of the plant.
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