How are we navigating the world when we attempt to treat a manmade crisis with a manmade solution? The Punjab government has scheduled to carry out artificial rain in Lahore on November 11 and 12, in a bid to tame the runaway Air Quality Index which reached hazardous levels in recent weeks. We have witnessed the air quality (and with it visibility) worsening every year in Lahore. But the solution of artificial rains is not just harmful as a ‘short term’ solution but could yield disastrous consequences.
In times of crisis, it is easy to overlook a need for fundamental research into the solutions we are employing, even when there is a clear lack of it. The use of silver iodide — for cloud seeding and inducing rain — is a ‘calculated risk’ we are ever willing to take. However, when using cloud-seeding technology, vast volume of data is required, especially data about the use of silver iodide and the effects of silver iodide smoke in climates of South Asia. When placed in a situation where data is lacking even on the exact causes of the smog itself, we must not ignore the lack of data surrounding the use of cloud seeding for the very environment we have been pushed as citizens to attend to. Right now, even in terms of causes, we are scrambling between the burning of crop residue and low-quality fuel.
This isn’t a panic-stricken article entirely; silver is a component we are exposed to in low levels within our drinking water and food. Studies show that silver is not ‘expected’ to hold any health hazards. Moreover, studies have concluded that AgI (silver iodide levels) are too low to induce a toxicological effect on the environment they, and they only remain in soils and sediments for some time but emphasise cumulative environmental effects from continuous practice (Elnafat, 2024). But not many studies have explored this in great detail. Its cumulative effects are not instruments of time we can afford to ignore. A 2016 study based in Spain attempted to assess the risk of acute toxicity caused by AgI through cloud seeding on selected soil and aquatic biota samples. The study produced a “high” ecotoxicological risk, using results based on AgI concentrations simulating those that can be expected after accumulative wet deposition in natural areas. This toxic effect may not be ascribable to the Ag ion due to the low solubility of AgI, and therefore other mechanisms underlying AgI toxicity such as direct contact can be considered. This is not an attempt to provide a science lesson on the hazards of cloud seeding; rather aim to highlight the sheer uncertainty present even within science on the health impacts of cloud seeding, and the calls of a discipline even the likes of science, to not rely on a lack of statistics.
One need not engage with scientific terminology here to place together the simple fact of the matter - that the smog pollutants will collude with the rain and make its way to our groundwater and canals etc. One of the primary reasons artificial rain is used (in other contexts) is for the artificial replenishment of groundwater. The disposal of hazardous pollutants in aquatic ecosystems, however, cannot be ignored and is an ecological concern that science has failed to address.
Even before we begin to consider the financial costs, which according to environmental lawyer Rafay Alam would cost “an arm and a leg”, we must consider the social and physically felt impacts artificial rains could promote in the long term
It is also worth looking towards the origins of artificial rainmaking to examine what we readily accept as solutions, and what are the implications of controlling the weather as such. For instance, in the so-called settler colony of the United States, rainmaking was used as a tactic to solidify their illegal control and ‘manage’ the climate of their newfound colony, significantly affecting its climate. Later on, cloud seeding was used in Operation Pop Eye (1967-1972) by the US Army as a weapon of war to throw back the Viet Cong into space and time by compromising their supplies and tunnels via excessive rain.
Thus, even before we begin to consider the financial costs of cloud seeding, which according to environmental lawyer Rafay Alam would cost “an arm and a leg”, we must consider the potential social and physical impacts that artificial rains could promote in the long term.
The dire condition of the smog was only realised due to its increased visibility and its effects that we so prioritise, in our atmosphere. Under the newly-instered Article 9A into the Constitution, the state must guarantee:“Every person shall be entitled to a clean, healthy environment.”
But we must not ignore the measures being taken to provide us with these conditions; access to knowledge is also a fundamental right.
As citizens, we should question more thoroughly what continues to make the smog worse. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in 2023 brought forth several flaws present in the National Clean Air Policy 2023, developed under a partnership of the Ministry of Climate Change and international advisors, which I am reproducing verbatim:
- More relaxed ambient air quality standards than previously adopted, reverting the WHO’s pre-2021 “interim targets” rather than advancing towards the new guidelines adopted in the WHO’s
2021 update; - Failure to set any ambitious emission load caps and reduction targets for key sectors, cities, and provinces;
- Failure to create tools and systems for air-shed levels air pollution control and governance;
- The importance of clear direction and a framework for provincial EPAs to create regional and city-level clean air action plans with defined targets and roles for regulators and polluters;
- The absence of strong legal backing in the form of a law and instead issues only an advisory policy.
These are the types of issues which should be brought forth with Lahore’s Smog Commission and currently active Judicial Water and Environment Commission, before endorsing a solution as an end-all. We need solutions adapted to our ecosystem and our climate.
That being said, this article does not aim to provide a solution or a set of directions - I am not a student of science. It is, however, a call to reexamine our stake in the environmental crisis around us and examine the steps we have taken to cause such a disastrous failure in keeping our livelihood.
It might be of interest to note that Dr. Sverre Petterson, Norwegian Meteorologist and Chairman of the Artificial Cloud Nucleation Committee for the Department of Defense, remarked to the committee that they were "Meteorological lambs in the hands of statistical wolves"