The Pakistan government’s warning that a huge lake in the North East Hunza Valley is about to engulf dozens of villages has been highlighted as a typical threat forewarned in a report about THE THIRD POLE region, just published by the HFP and its partners, chinadialogue and the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre at UCL.

The Pakistani government says a catastrophe is imminent from the rapidly rising water level in an artificial lake caused by a massive Himalayan landslide, threatening tens of thousands of lives.

Co-authors of the report, ‘THE THIRD POLE: sources of threat, sources of survival’, Dr. Randolph Kent of the Humanitarian Futures Programme and Isabel Hilton, Editor of Chinadialogue, say the study of the Hindu-Kush Himalayas and its major river basins was conducted because it presents one of the greatest potential threats the global system will face in the foreseeable future. 

“It is so tragic, but perhaps inevitable, that just as our report is published with the aim of raising worldwide awareness of the great vulnerability of THE THIRD POLE region, we see dreadful evidence of a hazard unfolding in North East Pakistan which is typical of the threats faced by the peoples of seven countries in this perilous region,” says Dr. Kent, Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King’s College London.

The report warns that the main natural hazards facing a fifth of the world’s population as landslides, earthquakes, extreme weather, windstorms, droughts, floods, wildfires and groundwater contamination.  It says the impacts of all of these may be magnified by environmental and climatic changes, population growth, globalisation and increasing demands on resources. 

Isabel Hilton says there is an obligation on the part of the global humanitarian sector including governments, multilaterals and humanitarian policy makers to give THE THIRD POLE region the highest priority strategic humanitarian planning.