Courtesy: NASA

The Waters of the Third Pole: Sources of Threat, Sources of Survival report was launched at the House of Lords on 19 May 2010 in order to heighten awareness of the vital importance of water as both an essential resource and a potential cause of crisis in Asia and elsewhere. The report is the product of collaboration between the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, China Dialogue, the Humanitarian Futures Programme of King’s College London and the Australian National University.

The report focuses on the ten major river basins that are fed from the Hindu Kush–Himalaya region, which is referred to by some as the Third Pole as it contains the largest reservoir of frozen water outside the Polar regions. More than one in five people on Earth depend on water from these river systems, but many of them are some of the most vulnerable on the planet. With changing climate and weather patterns, population growth and densification, resource mismanagement and political and development tensions, water stress and hazards in the region are likely to escalate in the future.

The report calls for greater collaboration, ranging from the local to the international scale, to better understand the water system in the Hindu Kush–Himalaya region and its drainage basins. Such cooperation is necessary to responsibly manage water resources and to prevent them becoming a major crisis driver in the future. At the launch the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor John Beddington, addressed this issue by referring to the need for greater interaction between scientists and humanitarian policy-makers to identify potential crisis drivers and to seize opportunities to mitigate the associated risks.

A copy of the report can be found here (click to read).

For further information, please contact Dr. Stephen Edwards:

E: s.edwards@ucl.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)20 7679 7880