The key development objective of Pakistan, since its existence, has been to reduce poverty, inequality and to improve the condition of its people. While this goal seems very important in itself yet is also necessary for the eradication of other social, political and economic problems. The objective to eradicate poverty has remained same but methodology to analysing this has changed. It can be said that failure of most of the poverty strategies is due to lack of clear choice of poverty definition. A sound development policy including poverty alleviation hinges upon accurate and well-defined measurements of multidimensional socio-economic characteristics which reflect the ground realities confronting the poor and down trodden rather than using some abstract/income based criteria for poverty measurement. Conventionally welfare has generally been measured using income or expenditures criteria. Similarly, in Pakistan poverty has been measured mostly in uni-dimension, income or expenditures variables. However, recent literature on poverty has pointed out some drawbacks in measuring uni-dimensional poverty in terms of money. It is argued that uni-dimensional poverty measures are insufficient to understand the wellbeing of individuals. Poverty is a multidimensional concept rather than a unidimensional. Uni-dimensional poverty is unable to capture a true picture of poverty because poverty is more than income deprivation

This study emphasizes on near surface observation of chemically active trace gases such as nitrogen dioxide (NO) over Islamabad on a regular basis. Absorption spectroscopy using backscattered extraterrestrial light source technique was used to retrieve NO differential slant column densities (dSCDs). Mini multi-axis-differential optical absorption spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) instrument was used to perform ground-based measurements at Institute of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (IESE), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) Islamabad, Pakistan. Tropospheric vertical column densities (VCDs) of NO were derived from measured dSCDs by using geometric air mass factor approach. A case study was conducted to identify the impact of different materials (glass, tinted glass, and acrylic sheet of various thicknesses used to cover the instrument) on the retrieval of dSCDs. Acrylic sheet of thickness 5 mm was found most viable option for casing material as it exhibited negligible impact in the visible wavelength range. Tropospheric NO VCD derived from ground-based mini MAX-DOAS measurements exceeded two times the Pak-NEQS levels and showed a reasonable comparison (r = 0.65, r = 0.81) with satellite observations (root mean square bias of 39 %) over Islamabad, Pakistan.

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This study uses the tropospheric ozone data derived from combined observations of Ozone Monitoring Instrument/Microwave Limb Sounder instruments by using the tropospheric ozone residual method. The main objective was to study the spatial distribution and temporal evolution in the troposphere ozone columns over Pakistan during the time period of 2004 to 2014. Results showed an overall increase of 3.2 ± 1.1 DU in tropospheric ozone columns over Pakistan. Spatial distribution showed enhanced ozone columns in the Punjab and southern Sindh consistent to high population, urbanization, and extensive anthropogenic activities, and exhibited statistically significant temporal increase. Seasonal variations in tropospheric ozone columns are driven by various factors such as seasonality in UV-B fluxes, seasonality in ozone precursor gases such as NO and volatile organic compounds (caused by temperature dependent biogenic emission) and agricultural fire activities in Pakistan. A strong correlation of 96% (r = 0.96) was found between fire events and tropospheric ozone columns in Pakistan.

The present address of Rabbia Murtaza is shown in this paper. (please tag the affiliation below, this is only for Rabbia Murtaza).