Across vast tracks of the world people are running short of a basic commodity: water. There are often many complex reasons that drive migration, but there is an undeniable relationship between water shortages and the large population movements we are seeing today.

For our fourth in a series of events in collaboration with the Scientific Exploration Society, we will be exploring how the effects of climate change are being seen across the Middle East and North Africa, the supply and control of water in the region, and the technologies that are being developed to combat the problem.

Chaired by the Guardian‘s environment editor, John Vidal.

The panel:

Roger Blench is a international development specialist and anthropologist. He has conducted research and evaluations of international development activities worldwide, notably in Nigeria and other regions of West Africa as a consultant and formerly as a research fellow of the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is now affiliated to the McDonald Institute of the University of Cambridge and is chief research officer for the Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.

Mikael Strandberg is a Swedish explorer and filmmaker. He has travelled solo through many parts of the world, including amongst communities in Yemen, through Africa and parts of Asia, and is currently working on a film project with migrants arriving to Sweden.

James Fergusson is an author and freelance journalist. He has written extensively on Afghanistan, Somalia and laterly used his degree in hydrology to write on water security in Yemen. His most recent book The Worlds Most Dangerous Place was nominated for the Orwell Prize.

Professor Tony Allan is based at King’s College London and SOAS London, he specialises in the analysis of water resources in semi-arid regions and on the role of global systems in ameliorating local and regional water deficits. He provides advice to governments and agencies especially in the Middle East on water policy and water policy reform. His is the author of The Middle East water question: hydropolitics and the global economy and Virtual water.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

As part of an ongoing collaboration between the Frontline Club and The Scientific Exploration Society, on Tuesday 9 June BBC Science editor and author David Shukman chaired a discussion examining the past, present and future of the Arctic. Joining Shukman was a panel of experts and an engaged audience of Arctic explorers and enthusiasts.

Andrew Mitchell, chairman of The Scientific Exploration Society, introduced the event. “The idea we had was: why don’t we bring together explorers and journalists who work at the frontline and debate important issues of the day.”

The role of research in the Arctic was discussed in depth, as panelists commented on the colossal volume of knowledge still left to uncover.

Co-director of the Grantham Institute, winner of the Martha T. Muse Prize for Excellence in Arctic Science and Policy, and fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Professor Martin Siegert commented, “as a glaciologist, we are concerned that with global warming and ice sheet melting there is a serious problem ahead for global sea level change, sea level rise.”

He continued: “We still really don’t know an awful lot about the topography beneath the large ice masses on the planet. So our models of projections are fundamentally weakened by that lack of knowledge. It’s a very fortunate position to be in as a scientist. It probably won’t be like this in 20 years… because scientific discovery can only be done once.”

L-R: Frank Hewetson, Charles Emmerson, David Shukman, Martin Siegert, Pen Hadow

The discussion covered the developments over time of the safety of explorers who travel to the region. Despite numerous technological advances, the Arctic climate and consequent harsh conditions remain severely dangerous for human visitors.

Pen Hadow – Arctic Ocean explorer and advocate; the sole person to have reached the North Geographic Pole solo; and founder of the Caitlin Arctic Survey – told audience members that “the six things that are likely to kill you are going to kill you in minutes. It’s immaterial whether you have a phone or a plane on standby.”

He added: “the effect of cold on brain function… it is just like being drunk. The more hypothermic you are, the less able you are to be creative, to think clearly, to anticipate the problems.”

Frank Heweston, who has worked on the Arctic campaign with Greenpeace for over five years, commented: “things go wrong quite quickly… anything at sea, especially the Arctic, has to be taken extremely seriously.”

#WorldOceansDay @frontlineclub @SES_explore @davidshukmanbbc @PenHadow wrapping up gr8 #exploration of #Arctic event! pic.twitter.com/VdnBpspf0O

— Peter Kohler (@P_Kohler) June 9, 2015

The increase in tourism was a source of concern for the panel, who offered differing perspectives on the potential results.

Shukman commented that he was “struck by this increase in tourism… The sheer ease with which people can now visit the Arctic with preconceived notions.”

Author of The Future History of the Arctic and associate fellow at Chatham House, Charles Emmerson, said “there are clearly risks to travel in the Arctic, but generally I think it’s a very good thing for more people to see the Arctic… I think it informs people. It gives them the encouragement, the idea that it’s something worth protecting and thinking about.”

Hadow added: “We have to get over this idea that the Arctic is beautiful… We’ve got to de-romanticise it… The Arctic Ocean is an asset ultimately, it’s providing a critical ecosystem service to the North Hemisphere.”

“It could be this year that the North Pole is a puddle… Apparently it’s one of the worst years so far for melting sea ice. Maybe the tourist element will go. There’s no point in visiting open ocean, you can do that anywhere,” added Siegert.

The panel then looked ahead to the future of the Arctic in 30 years time.

Heweston offered a grim prediction. “The militarisation of the Arctic will have happened by then. The drive for further fossil fuel exploration will probably not be stopped… I cannot see that there won’t be some type of military conflict.”

Siegert added: “We will see continued ice sheet retreats and glacier melting… Sea levels go up and the rate of change will be increasing as well.”

The discussion drew to a close with a final audience question, on the subject of what can be done to help on a micro level. The panelists agreed that it was necessary for everyone to take an individual role in monitoring and reducing their own carbon footprint in order to collectively contribute to the safeguarding of the Arctic.

The panel will discuss how knowledge and understanding of environmental impact, extraction of resources and geopolitical issues have moulded the region, and what the consequences are for those of us watching from afar. With oil firm Royal Dutch Shell having recently won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior to explore for oil in the Arctic, we will be asking what this kind of exploration means for the region.

This event will be chaired by BBC Science editor David Shukman, whose reports on research have taken him as far afield as the Antarctic ice-sheet, the Amazon rainforest and the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. Since joining the BBC in 1983, he has covered Northern Ireland, defence, Europe and world affairs. He is author of An Iceberg As Big As Manhattan: Reporting from science’s new frontlines and Reporting Live from the End of the World.

The panel:

Pen Hadow is an Arctic Ocean explorer and advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Pen Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.

Professor Martin Siegert FRSE is co-director of the Grantham Institute. Previously, he was director of the Bristol Glaciology Center at Bristol University and head of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University. His particular field of expertise is to use geophysics to measure the subglacial landscape and understand what this tells us about changes to the environment. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T. Muse Prize for excellence in Antarctic science and policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Charles Emmerson is a writer and historian based in London. He is the author of The Future History of the Arctic, exploring the past, present and future of our relationship with the Arctic, from past mythologies of the north to the modern emergence of the Arctic as a zone of geopolitical interest and massive environmental change. He is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Frank Hewetson has worked for Greenpeace for over 25 years. He has particular knowledge of protest against the off-shore oil industry, he has spent many months at sea and worked consistently on the Arctic campaign for the last 5 years, and was one of the ‘Arctic 30’ detained by the Russians in September 2013.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

On Tuesday 21 April, the Frontline Club hosted a panel to discuss the water crisis in Brazil and the world’s largest green area, the Amazonian rainforest. Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, the event was the second in a series entitled ‘Exploration of the Frontline,’ a collaboration between the Scientific Exploration Society and the Frontline Club that aims at bringing together journalists, explorers and academics for an evening of informed debate.

l-r: Andrew Mitchell , Sue Cunningham, Nixiwaka Yawanawa, Peter Bunyard, Dr Friederike Otto, Rogerio Simoes

“In Sao Paulo you have a city of 22 million people facing chronic droughts, a situation unique in the history of Brazil,” Mitchell said. This drought is largely the result of wide-scale deforestation, and of changes to the ecosystems in the Amazonian area, hundreds of miles north of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil’s coastline.

Sue Cunningham, an author and photographer with more than 20 years of experience in Brazil, illustrated the consequences of the massive deforestation that she had been witness to during a 2007 expedition on the Xingu river in the heart of the rainforest. Travelling by boat and small planes, the group visited 48 different tribes living along the river.

“When you fly over the forest, you can see when the pollution happens from a pristine river to a contaminated river,” said Cunningham, showing an aerial picture of the polluted Xingu where mercurial refuse had caused a significant change in the colour of the water.

Nixiwaka Yawanawá, a member of the Yawanawá tribe currently working with Survival International to raise awareness about the Amazon and the rights of tribal communities, showed the Frontline Club audience a video of the latest flood that had hit his indigenous community in the Brazilian state of Acre.

Up to 80% of the villages and settlements of the Yawanawá community were swept away. “We never thought that this would happen,” said Yawanawá. “One of our shamans, and they usually are the oldest people in a tribe, he said that in one hundred years we have never seen this kind of flood. Everyone was very shocked and surprised, but we have to carry on.”

The task of explaining the meteorological dynamics of the issue was assumed by panelists Peter Bunyard and Dr Friederike Otto.

Peter Bunyard, founder of The Ecologist, explained the role of trade winds that flow from Africa and the Atlantic over the Amazonian basin. These winds create a mechanism called the ‘biotic pump’, a natural phenomenon that influences the climate of the entire Latin American region, from Panama to Patagonia.

Otto, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, linked the occurrence of drastic climate events such as droughts, typhoons and hurricanes to longterm climate change and the consequential rise in temperature of the planet. “This is a longterm change, and all of these events play together.”

Rogerio Simoes, a Brazilian journalist based in London and former head of the Brazilian Service at the BBC World Service, explained that the rising population of Sao Paulo was a major game-changer in environmental terms.

“Brazil just cannot cope with the population growth,” said Simoes. “According to the latest census in Brazil, there are 11.6 million people living in slums, illegal slums.”

Simoes finished by adding that the short-sightedness of Brazilian politicians was leading to a worsening of the situation. For example, the governor of Sao Paulo state, Geraldo Alckmin, repeatedly denied any issue of water shortage during the 2014 election campaign, at a time when the main water reservoir was at just 7.2% of its total capacity.

Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world, may run out of water in the next few months leaving 20 million people high and dry. Who is to blame? Incompetent politicians, unpredictable weather patterns or the wholesale destruction of Amazonia’s rainforests?

How does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource?

Join us for the second in a series of events held in partnership with The Scientific Exploration Society, as we bring together explorers, scientists and journalists to examine the water shortage in Brazil and debate the wider questions about global water security.

Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.

The panel:

Peter Bunyard is an author, journalist and founder of The Ecologist. He spent many years exploring and lecturing on the subject of indigenous responsibilities in the Colombian Amazon. More recently, having been alerted to the Biotic Pump theory, he carried out studies in Costa Rica and back home in Cornwall to test the physics of the theory, amassing evidence to challenge current climate modelling on the impact of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Sue Cunningham is a photographer, author and trustee of Tribes Alive/Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust. She and her husband Patrick Cunningham were awarded the Neville Shulman prize by the Royal Geographical Society for their Heart of Brazil Expedition travelling on the Xingu river by boat, visiting 48 tribal villages and documenting the affects of climate change and man’s dramatic impact on the rain forest.

Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist based in London. He is a former head of the BBC’s Brazilian Service and has written about Brazil for the CNN website. He was also executive-editor at Brazilian weekly news magazine Epoca and opinion editor and London correspondent at Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

Nixiwaka Yawanawa, represents the 900 strong Yawanawa tribe, the ‘People of the Wild Boar’ of Acre within the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil, an area recently decimated by terrible flooding. He is currently working for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights

Dr Friederike Otto is a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, leading the distributed volunteer computing project climateprediction.net. Her main research interest is the attribution of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. A major focus of this work is to explore the propagation of uncertainty from external drivers to actual impacts of climate change and assess associated risks.

Members of the Frontline Club, the Scientific Exploration Society and all those with a wish to add value and purpose to their travels are invited to a special evening to introduce a new collaboration and to meet some of the foremost pioneering explorers of our time.

With both journalists and explorers operating in high-risk environments with the shared objectives of investigating issues and reporting findings, these two communities, represented by The Scientific Exploration Society and the Frontline Club, are launching an exciting new initiative to begin working more closely together.

The evening’s panel discussion and audience Q&A, identifies the mutual risks, priorities and opportunities for journalism and exploration. Panelists include leading lights from both communities with explorers Andrew Mitchell and Pen Hadow joined by Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith.

In the months ahead, the initiative will bring together the two communities in a series of presentations, debates, skills workshops, and social events to enhance the safety and productivity of all parties.

Chaired by Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, an award-winning independent cameraman and a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

The panel:

Andrew Mitchell is a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.

Pen Hadow is an arctic ocean explorer & advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.

Ryan Burke is the SES Explorer 2014. Canadian born Burke is a 2nd year DPhil Candidate at Oxford, who is carrying out a detailed study of the Gelada monkey in the Ethiopian highlands to establish their potential role as a keystone species in the Afroalpine ecosystem.  He will tell us about the challenges and benefits of using drones to capture and classify imagery of this stunning ecosystem, and will show some of his fantastic images, a sneak preview of which can be seen at http://ryanjburke.ca/.

Oliver Steeds is an investigative journalist and adventurer. He’s reported for Channel 4 (Dispatches, Unreported World, News), ABC (Nightline), NBC (Today), Al Jazeera (People & Power, Witness, Earthrise). He has led numerous expeditions, hosting 4 series for the Discovery Channels worldwide and the Travel Channel in the US. Steeds is also a director of the educational social enterprise – Digital Explorer – that brings the front lines of journalism and exploration to the classrooms of the world.