Dawar Hameed Butt, Environment & Climate Advisor

Dawar Hameed Butt has spent years making Pakistan’s air quality crisis legible to the public, to policymakers, and to the media. As co-director of the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative and a public policy, health, and sustainability consultant, he has been at the forefront of research and advocacy on air pollution, smog, and the health consequences of environmental degradation in Pakistan’s cities. His analysis during the COVID-19 lockdown demonstrated that nitrogen dioxide emissions dropped by nearly fifty percent in Lahore, thirty-five percent in Karachi, and over fifty percent in Islamabad when industrial activity ceased, offering a baseline that made visible what clean air could look like. He has argued compellingly for transboundary pollution management between Pakistan and India, pointing out that smog does not respect borders and that the Male Declaration framework for South Asian cooperation on air quality, while stalled, represents the right architecture for a regional solution. He has delivered sessions on climate sensitive budgeting and climate finance transparency for government officers, and written extensively on Pakistan’s climate governance landscape. He was also one of the organisers of the nationwide Climate Strikes across Pakistan and has represented the country’s climate civil society perspective at COP28.