By Aida Kadyrzhanova in Almaty Ten million people, inhabiting a plateau including parts of eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan that is a dominant part of the “Third Pole of the Earth”, are threatened by climate change-driven permafrost thawing that is occurring at a rate twice the world average, according to research published by the Communications Earth & Environment journal. The thawing of the permafrost (permanently frozen soil) is said to be undermining the stability of local infrastructure across the Himalayan Qinhai-Tibet Plateau, a 970,000-square-mile (2.5mn-square-kilometre) are…
