Third Pole

The Third Pole, also known as the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan system (HKKH), is a mountainous region west and south of the Tibetan Plateau. Part of High-Mountain Asia, it spreads over an area of more than 4.2 million square kilometres (1.6 million square miles) across nine countries, i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Tajikistan. The area is nicknamed "Third Pole" because its mountain glaciers and snowfields store more frozen water than anywhere else in the world except for the Arctic and Antarctic polar caps. With the world's loftiest mountains, comprising all 14 peaks above 8,000 metres (26,000 ft), it is the source of 10 major rivers, and forms a global ecological buffer.

The Third Pole area possesses huge socioeconomic and cultural variance; being home to a range of ethnic communities conversing in more than 600 languages and many more dialects. It is rich with natural resources and consists of all or some of four global biodiversity hotspots. The mountain resources administer a wide range of ecosystem benefits and the base for the drinking water, food production and livelihoods to the 220 million inhabitants of the region, as well as indirectly to the 1.3 billion people — one sixth of the world's population — living in the downstream river basins. More than 3 billion people benefit from the food and energy produced in these river basins whose headwaters rely on meltwaters and precipitations that run off these mountains.