World leading polar explorer and environmentalist, Pen Hadow, announced an international scientific endeavour to predict the meltdown date of the North Pole permanent ice cap more accurately, thereby helping governments around the world to prepare for the significant consequences.

Hadow (45) is leading the Vanco Arctic Survey to capture the most detailed and accurate data ever recorded on the thickness of the North Pole ice cap which floats on the Arctic Ocean. This unique data will help scientists determine how long an ice cap will remain around the North Pole. Its disappearance will cause accelerated climate change, rising sea levels, and even geo-political conflicts over resources which will affect almost every region of the world.

Scientists' current predictions for the melting of the ice cap vary wildly, from 100, to just 16, years from now. The ice at the North Pole is currently decreasing at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres per year due to global warming.

Setting out next February, 2008, the Vanco Arctic Survey team - comprising Hadow, leading polar explorer Ann Daniels, and specialist Arctic photographer Martin Hartley - will undertake a 120 day, 2000km crossing of the ice cap in temperatures as low as minus 50ºC. The survey team will depart from Point Barrow, Alaska, pulling 'sledge-boats', and on occasions even swimming across stretches of open water, reaching the North Geographic Pole in June.

Vanco, the [UK-headquartered] global telecoms company, is the title sponsor of the project, but is representing the Telecommunications Industry as a whole.

Vanco believes that the Telecommunications Industry has a unique and vital role in developing a sustainable world where economic growth can go hand in hand with environmental protection. ETNO, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, indicated in its 2006 Sustainability Report that if 20% of business travel in a major European country was replaced with an alternative, such as video conferencing, CO2 emissions would be reduced by over 5 million tonnes. Multiplied across tens of thousands of multinational businesses across the globe, the impact of meeting electronically rather than physically is substantial.

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