4. The Caspian Sea: threats to its biological resources and environmental security

The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland sea. Physiographically it is unique. It is the most productive body of water in the world1 and the only one that preserves the geno-fund of the sturgeon, the source of almost all the black caviar produced. About 10 million people live around the Caspian Sea and the occupations of many of them are connected with the sea, and first of all with fishing. By virtue of its oil and gas potential the Caspian has a place among the major world centres of hydrocarbon production. The rivers of the largest water catchment area in the world discharge into it from the industrial and production regions of the littoral states. This fact accounts for the periodic fluctuations of the sea level and for the nature and scale of pollution of the sea. As for the water body itself, there has always been a conflict between the use of its principal natural resources—biological resources (fishing of valuable fish species, first and foremost the sturgeon)—and the exploitation of hydrocarbons (the development of shelf and offshore oil and gas fields). This conflict has become especially acute since the breakup of the Soviet Union, as a result of which the legal status of the Caspian Sea changed, regulation of the exploitation of the sea’s resources has broken down, and the geopolitical interests of five different states conflict. These interests are those connected with military and political security, with shipping, with the exploitation of biological and mineral resources, and with environmental security. The newly independent states in the Caspian region link their prospects of socio-economic development with the implementation of hydrocarbon projects financed by other major countries. Hydrocarbons can be considered both a direct and an indirect source of many environmental problems in the region, but also as a means, and sometimes the only means, of solving those problems. The existing and planned exploitation of the hydrocarbon resources in the Caspian is fraught with risk to the integrity of its ecosystem, and this risk is multiplied many times because the Caspian is an inland sea. Threats to the natural environment include fluctuations in the sea level, surge effects, the increasing salinity of groundwater, industrial pollution, loss of biodiversity and other factors. Trans-border environmental problems could give rise to conflicts here. They include a sharp reduction in and deterioration in the quality of commercial fish