Dr. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, president of Iceland and Chair of the NRF honorary board, was recently hounored with the Nehru Award in Delhi for International Understanding. In an address by Dr. Grimsson on receiving the Nehru Award on 14 January 2010, Dr. Grimsson suggests that countries around Himalaya forms a Himalayan Council modeled after the Arctic Council. Dr. Grimsson mentions in his speech that the Arctic Council has been a great success for the eight Arctic countries for cooperation. This was reported on the Arctic Council webpage, www.arctic-council.org.

In his speech Dr. Grimsson says that:

"The eight countries of the Arctic - the United States, Canada, Russia and the five Nordic nations - created a framework for gradual dialogue. This framework was limited at first, focusing primarily on the environment and human development, making science and research the initial pathways.

The Arctic Council has since grown into a productive forum, rich in innovative features, bringing indigenous people and esteemed officials together in a common effort.

The Arctic Climate Assessment, and another report on Arctic Human Development, published during the Icelandic Presidency of the Council a few years ago, summarized the research conducted by hundreds of scientists from all the eight countries".

It can be read from his speech that President Grimsson is fascinated of the idea of Himalaya as the third pole and brings out the importance of them for their neighboring countries and mentions the importance of increased cooperation:

"Together with the Arctic, the Himalayas are among the main ice covered areas of the world, similarly linking large countries and small and harboring sites where military strength has long been on display.

The countries which depend on the Himalayas for water resources, for their future food security, are the home of more than two billion people who face, in the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, a major challenge. In the coming years or decades this situation could spark off conflicts and inflame grievances across already sensitive borders. Yet there is no regional forum mandated to promote the necessary scientific and policy cooperation."

Dr. Grímsson feels that his promotion of a Himalayan Council can be his way of paying back for the Nehru Award:

"When I asked myself what I could bring to India to show my gratitude for being granted this honour, the Nehru Award, in addition to offering the research and the technological achievements of my country, it became paramount in my mind to share with you the productive model of the Arctic Council, the scholarly, diplomatic and policy experience gathered in the last few decades by the eight Arctic countries.

The idea of a Himalayan Council, modelled on the Arctic Council where, in the 1990s, the two superpowers joined hands with smaller states, is a vision I present here today, humbly in the spirit of my longstanding friendship with India and with reference to the future of the other countries in the region.

A Himalayan Council could, like its Arctic predecessor, initially serve as a forum for the promotion of research and scientific cooperation, for a dialogue on human development, for voicing and hearing the concerns of the people who live in the mountains and witness at close hand how the changes in the water resources and the transformation of the soil cover, affect their livelihood.

The Himalayas constitute the crown of Mother Earth and link together a third of human kind. Their future is also our common fate.

It might be considered audacious, and rightly so, to arrive here in Delhi from the far-away Atlantic to bring forth such a proposal, on how the countries in the Himalayas could gradually enhance their cooperation".

President Grimsson Address on receiving The Nehru Award, Delhi, 14 January 2010

Dr. Grimsson raisied the idea publicly for the first time at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs talk on April 1, 2008. To view the talk, please see the excerpt on this video link.

For the full video, audio, and transcript of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs talk on April 1, go to the Carnegie Council webpage.