PROTECTING THE THIRD POLE: Transplanting International Law.

• Jurisdiction: New Zealand
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Waters, Graeme

PROTECTING THE THIRD POLE: Transplanting International Law

Author: Simon Marsden

Published by: Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2019, 328pp, 95 [pounds sterling].

Ever heard of the Third Pole? Me neither, but then again neither had Simon Marsden until seven years back. A professor of law at the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom, he has now written several papers and books on the subject. He describes this one as the completion of his 'Asian international environmental law trilogy'. Think of our planet as having two very large ice caps, top and bottom, and another around the Hindu Kush Himalayas and Tibetan plateau-- that is, the Third Pole. Developments there really do affect the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people --by one measure, a fifth of humanity.

Altogether, sixteen different countries are linked to the Third Pole by dint of either having territory in it or being dependent on the rivers that flow from the annual ice melt. China and India are the two territorial heavy weights, but do not forget Pakistan. All three are nuclear-armed and have been at war over territory in the region. Bhutan and Nepal have the distinction of lying wholly within the Third Pole. Afghanistan and Tajikistan link central Asia. The list of famous rivers includes the Indus, the Mekong, the...