Santosh, welcome to SPF World Views.
Dr. Rauniyar: Thank you for inviting me for this podcast. I'm Santosh Kumar Rauniyar and I'm from Nepal. I'm a research fellow at the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. I’m leading a project called Third Pole.
In general, it's called Third Pole, but the exact name of the project is Himalaya to the Ocean, which is H20, and we are connecting Himalaya, the cryosphere region, to the coastal region. And that's what, in a holistic manner, the Third Pole project is about.
When people hear the phrase polar region or think of the polar regions, I think most often people will think of the North Pole or the South Pole. However, the region we're focusing on today is, as you brought up, called the Third Pole. So, I'd like you to give us just a brief overview of what exactly the Third Pole is.
Dr. Rauniyar: Absolutely. When we talk about a polar region, in our mind is generally the Arctic or Antarctic. Well, a pole means we generally see north and south. But in other terms, in cryospheric terms, the snow coverage and the amount of snow deposited or the amount of snow in the region, the Arctic and Antarctic has the highest amount of snow-covered areas. Besides that, the Third Pole, the Himalaya Hindu-Kush region has the third highest snow cover and ice in the region. So it is called Third Pole.
The Third Pole is Asia's water tower, since it has the third highest amount of snow, it is the main source of water to Asian countries.
To be precise, the Third Pole is mostly Central Asia, South Asia, and also some parts of Southeast Asia. For example, in the Tibetan Plateau with China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Afghanistan as well.
In terms of snow cover, these glaciers are the snow cover in the area, which has ten major rivers through all these Asian countries and which feeds almost 2 billion people in these countries.
I hope you could talk a bit about the relationship between this Third Pole region and the ocean. You mentioned how your main focus is looking at this connection between the two, so I wonder if you could walk us through what exactly that relationship is.
Dr. Rauniyar: Whatever happens in Himalaya doesn't stay there. It flows down to the coastal cities and the coastal areas, which is the Bay of Bengal in my research.
So, it's connected through water. It's connected through communities residing in those areas. It’s connected through the climatic conditions and all the phenomena that happens in the climatic conditions, and also it is connected with the economy.
There are several dimensions and points of connections between Himalaya and ocean, and that's what the main agenda of this project and main goal of this project is to study about these connections, which hasn't been done before. We have talked about this several times, in many occasions. But actually on the ground and in the real form, it hasn't been explored and studied.
Through this project, we are trying to step forward, initiate this assessment of how these changes in cryosphere in Himalayan region are affecting the upstream itself, the cryosphere region itself; the midstream, which is the plainlands and riverine basin system; and the downstream which is the coastal area.
What is unique about the environmental challenges that are posed to this region? We've discussed its similarities in the fact that it's the third largest region of ice on the Earth compared to the Arctic and Antarctic regions. So they do share this similar environmental challenge regarding climate change, ice melting, etc. What is unique about the Third Pole specifically?
Dr. Rauniyar: That's a very interesting and very important question, actually. Yes, as you mentioned, the connection or the similarities between the poles — Arctic, Antarctic, and Third Pole — is the cryosphere environment, the changes in climatic conditions in this cryosphere environment.
But the distinction and very, very important part of the Third Pole is the size of population residing in this region.
For instance, if I can give an example, we are talking about 1.5°C change. Well, yes, of course it will impact glacier melts, cryosphere snow melts in the Arctic. It will have a big degradation in climate and the ecology system of the Arctic region and Antarctic region.
But in the Third Pole region, there are more additional damages we have to think of in terms of the vulnerability to the population and community residing there, in terms of the dependent populations on these water sources, how they will live. It will impact the livelihood of people who are residing and who are dependent on this, so the stakes are much larger.
What are the projections for what might happen in the future.
Dr. Rauniyar: Well, there are so many statistics, but I will just give some of them, very vital one. As I already mentioned, there are ten major rivers, which are flowing through these glaciers and almost 2 billion people are dependent on these rivers for their livelihood, for their water sources.
In the recent analysis from ICIMOD and other organizations, it has estimated that 30% of the glaciers’ volume will be lost by the end of this century if the current 1.5°C persists. That means the dependent population will not get this livelihood through this water, glacier melt water.
In addition to that, glacial melting doesn’t happen in a very smooth manner. There's an outburst of lakes, which we call GLOF (glacial lake outburst flood). This is getting frequent nowadays. Recently, in the last couple of years we have seen so many cases of glacial lake outburst in the Hindu Kush region, impacting this mountain community and also impacting the lowland communities.
So this will be more frequent. Natural hazard will occur due to climate change or due to some other factors. But the disaster which is induced by anthropogenic activity, is massive in scale.
If the water sources are drying up, it will be a new challenge for the population, for the drinking water sources, for the irrigation purpose, household water requirements will not be fulfilled. That's one side of this story.
The other side of this story is too much water. As I mentioned, glacial lake outbursts will cause floodings, frequent flooding we can see. Now we can see new phenomena like cloudburst, supra glacial lake outburst, which is never heard before.
What exactly does that mean?
Dr. Rauniyar: Well, cloudbursts are too much heavy accumulation of clouds, bursting into too much rain, which is not a natural phenomena in that region. So it's now occurrence is there and now it's becoming normal.
A supra glacier is a glacial lake formed over a glacier. So particularly a glacial lake is formed when a glacier melts and flows down, and then somewhere it gets stuck and the lake is formed. But now, there's a glacier and the lake is formed over the glacier. It's more dangerous, actually.
So those kind of new phenomena in environment in ecosystem in the HKH region is very dangerous, and it is creating another unique challenge where on one side we have water scarcity, droughts, on the other side we have too much water flooding and landslides and all this stuff.
So, we have to see how these unique challenges could be mitigated, and the proper adaptation measures could be taken.
And third very important point is these regions do not have enough capability and resources to mitigate and have proper adaptation measures, so that is another unique challenge, you know, these countries are developing nations, some are the least developed countries.
That's why we as the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the international community are trying to, you know, support, in terms of assessment, in terms of assessment-based solutions, and then also how we can propose these recommendations for different policies to mitigate these challenges.
You brought up the idea of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation working on this, so I wanted to take a little bit of a step from that and talk about Japan's connection to this. Japan is obviously not a part directly of the Third Pole, nor is it an Arctic nation technically, due to its geography. So I wonder if you could talk about what is the role or connection for Japan in this context, and what is the potential role that you would like to see Japan take?
Dr. Rauniyar: Japan, being an Asian country and being in the Pacific region, the climatic conditions and weather condition patterns in East Asia, including Japan, will be affected by the change in climatic conditions in the Bay of Bengal or cryosphere region in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya.
That being said, Japan particularly has been actively involved in long standing science and tech partnership in the HKH region. For example, in the 1970s Japanese expedition, geological expedition was probably one of the first expeditions done in Nepal through satellite imagery and then collecting photographs of glacial lakes and glacier itself.
In addition to that, there are several projects going on along with JAXA, which is the Aerospace Agency of Japan, and JICA programs in Bhutan and Nepal in different regions. Japan has been involved directly and indirectly in the assessment and then to provide the scientific evidence and to make stakeholders of these countries aware about what is going on at the present with the environment in cryosphere.
Whatever happens in the mountains in the Hindu Kush region doesn't stay there. It does affect, East Asian environment. The Polar vortex, for example, you know, the monsoon change in Bay of Bengal and cryosphere region in Hindu Kush Himalaya does affect polar vortex and it does affect the climatic conditions, rainfall, and other environmental factors in Arctic region as well.
You brought up how Japan has been active in the region, and we've also been discussing the importance of this kind of international collaboration, because what happens in one region is not limited to that region, but is really a shared challenge and a shared impact felt by people outside of the region as well. Which brings me to our second point of conversation. I wanted to ask you about the Second Interpolar Conference which was held in Kathmandu in September 2025. Can you give us a bit of background about what exactly this Interpolar Conference meeting is, and who are the main stakeholders involved?
Dr. Rauniyar: The Second Interpolar Conference is one of the initiatives of connecting, both poles — mostly the Arctic and Third Pole region — on different domains, for example, environmental domains, climate change domains, and of course the community domain as well. Actually, the Arctic Center, University of Lapland, ICIMOD, and OPRI are the co-organizers of the Interpolar Conference along with UArctic partners. It is biannual meeting held every two years.
The main agenda of this is to bring the young scientists, researchers and stakeholders in both regions to exchange what they are doing, to update each other, to exchange their ideas and opinions, and also to exchange the solutions from science perspective to the indigenous science, knowledge and practices and traditional practices in the regions. So, facilitating this exchange and giving the platform, this is what the Interpolar Conference is.
Our first Interpolar Conference was held in 2023. We were able to invite 100 researchers from both regions, the Arctic region and Third Pole region, where they presented their research, and we published a detailed report on it last year.
In terms of society, we were able to bring this indigenous society and community, their practices, their knowledge and science, and to exchange, which hasn't been done in the past. And this will lead us to have more innovative and critical ideas for the solutions and adaptation practices. Maybe we can find some new adaptation practices and how to deal with this climate change in both regions.
2025 also the UN has designated it as the International Year of Glacier Preservation, so we have this increased focus on preserving glaciers alongside this Interpolar Conference that was also being held. Can you talk about what were some of the main outcomes that came out of the meeting from this year, from your perspective?
Dr. Rauniyar: A very important thing this year we were able to achieve was to facilitate discussion on the Global Goal on Adaptation under the UNFCCC initiative, which they are now revising, how we can implement or plan and implement the global adaptation plans in the national adaptation planning or those kind of policy documents.
In our conference this year, we were able to discuss in detail about how cryosphere science and practices could be put into this Global Goal on Adaptation framework under the UNFCCC.
It seems like there were a lot of really constructive steps taken, but I wonder if you could also talk about what challenges you see that remain within this context and what are your expectations moving forward?
Dr. Rauniyar: There are multiple countries with different geographies, different cultures, different lifestyles, different communities, different political systems. Even though we call it the Hindu-Kush region and Third Pole region, it's very diverse and geopolitics are quite complicated.
We are talking about the communal climate, communal water, but there’s still water diplomacy, which is so difficult because water is a resource, and when it comes to resources, it comes to the economy, and when it comes to the economy, things are complicated.
A challenge is how to persuade all these different stakeholders in the same table to work in combination and in collaboration to solve the issue or to find the solution for this climate change, to promote water diplomacy, how we can support each other because it's a transboundary issue. It's not one country can do everything about it. We need transboundary solutions, and for that we need transboundary negotiation and discussions.
Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, these countries, which are in the Third Pole region are not developed economies. What I mean is that, if we go to GDP per capita income, it is one of the least, not least, but very low per capita income countries. The infrastructure development, economic power and resources availability are very scarce.
So again, it's another unique challenge, even though we have solutions or we have some recommendations for the solutions, who will fund this? Who will support this in terms of financial resources or technical resources and knowledge?
And lastly, understanding of people, awareness of people and how they see things. Some of these countries or stakeholders say we are developing now, and so we should be able to develop using the same development economic model of the 1970s burning fossil fuels. Why not? Of course. This is our turn now. That's one of the perspectives. Second perspective is like, yeah, you did it. And now we have to suffer. Why?
I don't know what will be the solution, but it's complex. UNFCCC, as I mentioned, COP30 is happening in Brazil, and last year it happened in Azerbaijan, where they completely and very seriously focused on climate financing. And hopefully this year we will discuss about it, but added on, we'll also work on it and act on it. So that's what I'm hoping for to solve part of this problem.
Are there any plans to integrate Third Pole topics into COP30 specifically, and if you could walk us through what OPRI has planned or if there's more general discussions coming up if you could let us know about that as well.
Dr. Rauniyar: Yes, for Conference of Parties 30 in Belém Brazil, we definitely, and we are very seriously presenting this Third Pole project and what we are doing now in the region.
The connection is, as I already mentioned, the Global Goal on Adaptation GGA under the UNCCC framework. Now we are in discussion phase, negotiation phase, how this, Global Goal on Adaptation revision can be done and how this can be implemented and all the things that can be sent to different governments and different countries.
And one part is how we can include cryosphere science and community practices and solutions, adaptation solutions, in this GGA framework under the UNFCCC. So this we will be highlighting and will be facilitating for the discussions in COP30 through the Cryosphere Pavillion. We will have sessions out there to discuss about how this cryosphere science can be integrated in GGA.
Based on these many different initiatives that are underway at OPRI, what are the future plans and where do you hope to take these efforts looking forward?
Dr. Rauniyar: Since we have initiated this project, it's I would say, a very important project for OPRI-SPF. It hasn't been done before, so at least if we can complete the assessment of different components — for example, cryosphere assessment, assessment of disaster risk reduction, disaster management, coastal ecosystem assessment, hydrological assessment — at least if we can complete this and we can based on that evidence, scientific research, and activities, we can have recommendations and propose solutions.
But action is important. So, in simple words, our plan is to act, and then complete whatever we have proposed, bring the stakeholders to the table and then share the findings and recommendations.
Outro: That was our conversation with Dr. Santosh Kumar Rauniyar, research fellow for the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Be sure to visit the show notes to learn more about the foundation’s Third Pole project. Thanks for joining us for this episode of SPF World Views. We’ll see you next time.
