Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs on local water resources and biology. Pugwash does not have formal membership. All participants take part in their individual capacities and not as representatives of any organization, institution or government. Anyone who has attended a meeting is considered a "Pugwashite". There are more than 3,500 "Pugwashites" worldwide. As the birthplace of the Pugwash movement, the Thinkers' Lodge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2008. The Jubilee 62nd Pugwash Conference devoted to nuclear disarmament will be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in 2017. The conference will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first Pugwash Conference, held
Joseph Rotblat the British delegation seems to be the first need, but I do not know if there is any hope of this." By the early 1960s the Ministry of Defence thought that the Pugwash Conferences were "now a very respectable organization", and the Foreign Office stated that it had "official blessing" and that any breakthrough may well originate at such gatherings. The Pugwash Conferences are credited with laying the ground work for the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 and the Chemical Weapons Convention