Caspian Sea

The caspian sea covers a vast strategic area in central Asia. It is the world's largest inland sea at around 386,400 square kilometers. An immense body of water—with many of the same properties of an ocean—it varies in salinity, climate and temperature from northern to southern latitudes. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Caspian was effectively a Soviet lake, with only the southern strip of coastline controlled by Iran. After 1989 the newly formed, independent countries of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan all shared the Caspian, vastly complicating the indeterminate legal status of the sea. This legal problem is one of the main reasons for the increasingly alarming environmental crisis affecting the sea and the surrounding coastline. However, a long history of shortsighted exploitation of oil resources remains the main reason for a worsening ecological crisis.

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on the Caspian coast, began experiencing serious environmental consequences from oil development as early as 1870. More than a century of urbanization and industrialization in the Caspian zone has made the sea a dumping ground for waste. Even feeding rivers like the Volga bring in thousands of tons of petroleum and nitrate wastes from the sprawling agricultural lands of central Russia every month. Although the fall of the Soviet economy led to some decrease in pollution, new, ambitious schemes for oil production agreed between the various bordering countries threaten to severely worsen the current ecological crisis. The most famous, immediate and pressing consequence of the Caspian's developing ecological and economic calamity is the possible eradication [Page 226]of the sturgeon catch, which provides almost all of the world's caviar. Pollution, pesticides, and unregulated fishing after the Soviet collapse led to an eightfold decline in the sturgeon catch from 1991–94. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species recommended that signatory countries refuse the import of Caspian Sturgeon. The World Wildlife Federation has suggested that the Caspian sturgeon may risk extinction if illegal poaching and consumption of caviar is not reduced.

It is not only sturgeon that may pay the price of uncontrolled petroleum development in the Caspian. Unlike the neighboring Aral—were sea levels have decreased—sea levels in the Caspian have risen dramatically, possibly as a consequence of the unbalanced climatic conditions caused by the drying of the Aral. Farms, industrial plants, and even nuclear power stations built on once-dry ground are being threatened by higher and more vigorous Caspian waves. Other biological products and resources are being sapped as land becomes saturated by oil products and the Caspian becomes more and more of a petrochemical dumping ground. Environmental groups have estimated the natural resources of the Caspian waters to be worth far more than $500 million. Oil production may reap short-term economic benefits for new and struggling post-Soviet nations; but the long-term political, social, environmental, and ultimately economic consequences of unbridled oil development will be severe.