Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

The United Nations has welcomed as "an important step" the renewed commitment of the five states bordering the Caspian Sea to protect its marine environment, Radio Liberty reported.

The UN Environmental Program (UNEP) said that Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan had reached a crucial milestone by adopting and signing one more protocol to the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, also known as the Tehran Convention.

The new protocol, UNEP said, addresses one of the major environmental threats to the Caspian: pollution derived from land-based sources, such as agriculture and industry.

The protocol on the protection of Caspian Sea environment was adopted in Moscow last Wednesday, the Russian ministry of ecology said.

The protocol is a second such document -- after the Aktau protocol in 2011 - signed after the adoption of the Tehran Convention. It will ensure the implementation of the convention signed in the Iranian capital in 2003. The protocol aims to prevent, reduce, control and eliminate pollution to the greatest extent and support environmentally friendly Caspian marine environment.

The Framework Convention was the first legally binding regional agreement signed by all the five Caspian littoral states, laying out general requirements and an institutional mechanism for environmental protection in the resource-rich Caspian region.

Opening the conference, Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Sergey Donskoy said the Tehran Convention is a crucial part of regional environmental cooperation.

In order to enforce the protocol, the convention signatories will prepare national action plans on the pollution sources control, set the emissions limit, promote the use of environmentally sound technologies and work to meet environmental quality objectives.

Azerbaijani Deputy Ecology Minister Rauf Hajiyev, Iranian Vice President and head of Environmental Protection Organization Mohammad-Javad Mohammadizadeh, Kazakh Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Marlen Iskakov and Turkmen Environment Minister Babageldi Annabayramov also took part in the conference.

The next ministerial meeting of the Tehran Convention member states will take place in Turkmenistan in 2014.

Pros and cons

Different opinions are expressed in the protocol. According to Rustam Mammadov, chair of international law at Baku State University, PhD of History and expert on the Caspian Sea, environmental monitoring must take place to further talks on issues of the Caspian Sea environment.

"However, there is still no special international organization to monitor Caspian environment," he noted. "Iran and Russia are conducting research in this sphere, but it is unknown how objective these researches are. To tackle this issue effectively, a special international organization entitled to monitor and conduct researches on the Caspian Sea environment must be created."

According to Mammadov, the Tehran Convention has no legal force, and it could hardly change anything.

The expert said taking substantial action on the Caspian environment requires expenses. However, none of the states "is eager to invest money in the basin's protection in the context of the world financial crisis". Each country lays the blame on another. Iran accuses Azerbaijan of polluting the Caspian, though it pollutes the sea and violates the rules the most of all littoral countries. Russia does not allocate money to help resolve the problem, though it pollutes the sea significantly. All this means that these countries can pay no attention to the marine environment at the moment, Mammadov concluded.

However, the head of Azerbaijan Green Movement Farida Huseynova believes that the protocol will actually work.

"Once the protocol goes into effect, it will help to clean up the sea and launch the work of certain agencies. The Caspian Sea pollution is a problem of not only Azerbaijan, but we have already started cleaning activities," Huseynova told local media.

Huseynova emphasized that pollution from land-based sources and activities referenced in the protocol comes through polluted rivers.

Some 90 percent of pollution came to the Caspian Sea from Volga River, while only five percent came from the Kura River. The projects on water supply and sanitation modernization are implemented in the Azerbaijani regions, which means that domestic sewage will not flow into rivers and consequently will not pollute the Caspian Sea.

Recently the Azerbaijani environment ministry proposed to build a tunnel along the seaside park (boulevard) in the capital Baku to prevent discharge of wastewater into the Caspian. The tunnel will prevent direct discharge of waste from such a large city as Baku into the basin, Minister Huseyn Bagirov said in November.

The old sea and its problems

The Caspian Sea is originally a salt-water lake but its sea floor is made of oceanic type of lithosphere. It is the biggest endorheic lake on Earth with the total surface of 371,000 square kilometers.

The sea basin is surrounded by five states, which is the reason of various names given to the lake by different nations and tribes. Nowadays, it is officially called after the Caspi tribe. But the sea has its regional names like Khazar in Azerbaijan.

The Caspian has been a lavish source of income for all those residing near it. Abundant natural resources, including seafood, oil and gas, and rich fauna and flora make the Caspian unique in the 'sea family'.

The sea, flush with natural resources, is suffering from pollution.

Oil production and refining has adversely affected the environmental condition of the sea. According to the Iranian international scientific research institute, sturgeon fish stock, which is characteristic only for the Caspian Sea, has shrunk by 25-30 percent and if the situation does not change the population of sturgeon will perish in 2021.

Scholars studying the ecosystem are becoming increasingly engaged in protecting the basin from industrial pollution and other damaging effects of human habitation.

Azerbaijan has undertaken solution of the Caspian Sea's environmental problems. For instance, about $1 billion has been allocated from the state budget for restoration and purification of the Caspian's stretch along the densely populated Absheron Peninsula, which encompasses the capital Baku and its surrounding regions.