Third Pole Climate Nexus
Connecting Policy, Science and Himalayan Communities to Drive Climate Solutions
Community-Led Adaptation
Support high mountain communities in designing and implementing locally driven climate resilience projects, including water management, glacial monitoring, and sustainable livelihoods.
Connect Himalayan communities with policymakers and scientists through participatory workshops, field research, and evidence-based policy briefs to ensure local knowledge informs climate solutions.
Transform field research and community narratives into impactful storytelling, documentaries, reports, and media that drive real-world climate action and measurable outcomes.
Policy & Science Integration
Actionable Storytelling
The Himalayas and surrounding high mountains are often called the “Third Pole” because they hold the largest ice reserves outside the Arctic and Antarctic.
The term highlights their critical role in global water and climate systems. However, the region spans multiple countries with disputed borders, and there is no shared governance framework, making the term politically and geostrategically sensitive.
What is the Third Pole?
Climate change is unfolding rapidly across the Earth’s cryosphere, the glaciers, snowfields, ice sheets and permafrost that shape water systems, ecosystems and climate processes worldwide.
In the Hindu Kush Himalaya, rising temperatures are accelerating glacier retreat, altering snowfall and disrupting high-mountain ecosystems. These changes are already affecting water availability, agriculture, biodiversity, livelihoods and the safety of mountain communities. Their consequences extend far beyond the region, as Himalayan rivers support large populations across Asia.
Many changes in the cryosphere will persist for generations. Adaptation is therefore essential, but it cannot prevent continued glacier loss if global temperatures continue to rise.
Protecting the Third Pole requires action at two levels: strengthening the resilience of communities and ecosystems already experiencing change, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit further warming.
Every fraction of a degree matters. The future of the Himalayas and of the people, ecosystems and economies that depend on them will be shaped by the scale and speed of action taken now.
The Third Pole Climate Nexus works across the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainable mountain development in the Hindu Kush Himalaya.
Our work focuses on understanding how environmental change affects ecosystems, water systems, livelihoods and community well-being. We bring scientific research into dialogue with Indigenous and local knowledge, recognising that effective climate and biodiversity action must reflect both ecological evidence and lived experience.
We focus on four closely connected themes: climate adaptation and resilience; biodiversity and ecosystem change; community knowledge and participation; and the translation of research into policy and practice.
Across these areas, we support approaches that strengthen environmental monitoring, make local knowledge more visible in decision-making, and connect international climate and biodiversity goals with the priorities of mountain communities.
By working across research, policy and community engagement, we aim to generate practical knowledge that supports more inclusive, locally grounded and effective responses to environmental change across the Himalayas.
CONTACT
© 2025 Third Pole Climate Nexus – Non-profit organisation registered under French law (Loi 1901)
General enquiries/partnerships: carole@thirdpoleclimatenexus.org
Join us to support mountain communities.