In February 2026, iProbono held the first of our series of thematic webinars for our South Asia Litigators Network, to address the growing crisis of transboundary air pollution in the region. According to the 2024 World Air Quality Report by IQAir, Bangladesh and Pakistan continued to rank among the top three most air-polluted countries in the world, while India accounted for 74 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities. The webinar served as a call to action for the international community to pursue collective campaigns to address the escalating threat to communities in South Asia and their right to life and a healthy environment.
Panellists Rafay Alam (Pakistan), Roshani Giri (Nepal), Lara Jesani (India) and Kanchana Balachandra (Sri Lanka), shared their expertise with the Network, and highlighted collective strategies to ensure the effective implementation of legislative measures to mitigate the threat of air pollution. As Lara Jesani pointed out: ‘we have a legal framework to respect and deliver the right, but…we do not see it translated on the ground’. The panel discussed the benefits and limitations of national, constitutional and regional remedies for air pollution in the region, and identified the need for comprehensive legislative protections to be translated into informed and actionable policies.
Panellists examined the utility and limitations of international instruments such as the Malé Declaration as mechanisms of collaborative solutions for air pollution. In addition to calling for solidarity within legal networks, Rafay Alam emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation, stating that ‘we need to get the scientific community and legal community to collaborate’, to properly assess the causes, effects and impacts of transboundary air pollution.
The discussion made clear that the international community must apply coordinated pressure on regional governments to fulfil their obligations to cooperate on collecting data and developing policies to address air pollution as a recognised transboundary issue. As environmental lawyer and former iProbono ESCR Fellow Roshani Giri pointed out: ‘Transboundary air pollution by definition is not an issue that a single state can solve alone’.
The webinar concluded with an interactive Q&A session in which members of iProbono’s network discussed which forms of regional solutions for air pollution could be pursued. In short, our international private, educational, legal and scientific communities must combine efforts to collect data to accountability mechanisms on government and private conduct which contribute to air pollution. The sustained commitment and collective action of our international civil society will be essential, and the continued cooperation of international networks will be vital in pursuing effective regional solutions to this shared challenge.
