Caspian Sea Basin

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Caspian Sea Basin

• CE397 Transboundary Water Resources
• L. White

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Littoral states
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Oil and natural gas basins
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Pipeline politics
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Environmental Issues

• Present
• Discharge and spills from oil and gas drilling
• Untreated waste
• Agricultural run-off
• Overfishing
• Potential
• Construction of new pipelines and infrastructures
• Rise of the Caspian Sea
• Political instability of the region

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Caspian Environment Programme

• Aim of the CEP (1998)
• Environmentally sustainable development and
  management of the Caspian Sea environment,
  including living resources and water quality, so
  as to obtain the utmost long-term benefits for
  the human populations of the regions, while
  protecting human health, ecological integrity,
  and the regions sustainability for future
  generations.

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Legal issues

• Currently no multilateral agreement as to how to
  divide the seabed and the waters.
• Main problems
• Iran claims that bilateral agreement between Iran
  and USSR is still valid
• Hinders development of legal framework for
  environment
• Sea or lake ?

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Legal issues

• Many bilateral treaties (to share seabed and/or
  waters)
• Until general agreement, median line convention
  signed by Ru, Az and Kz
• Iran disagrees. It wants to equally divide the
  sea (20 each)
• Tk disagrees. Method does not take into
  consideration geographical peculiarities

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Legal issues

• Turkmenistan proposes the 45-mile division
• Rest of the sea is open for shipping
• Iran still wants 20 of the sea

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Discussion

• How would the lack of strict environmental
  regulations affect international companies (used
  to complying with laws) investing in the Caspian
  Sea Region ?
• How would competition against local companies
  be affected ?

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Discussion

• Fishing constitutes the primary interest of
  Russia in the Caspian Sea whereas Azerbaijan and
  Kazakhstan are focused on oil production.
• The latter are less concerned about environment
  degradation than the former.
• Given these divergent objectives, how could we
  provide the littoral states with coherent and
  practical environmental regulations ?

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Discussion

• One of the major investors in the region is the
  US. However, US law prohibits US companies to
  directly trade with Iran.
• How canceling the embargo would modify the
  geopolitical landscape in the region ?

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Discussion

• As the new littoral states (mainly Azerbaijan
  and Kazakhstan) move toward free markets, is the
  state of the environment in the Caspian Sea more
  likely to improve or degrade ?
• Why ?

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Discussion

• To what extent can we trust international
  organizations when it comes to environmental
  protection ?