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On behalf of the Russian Federation Committee on Water Economy, I would like to welcome the participants of the NATO-sponsored Workshop on the Problems of the Caspian Sea and the Circum-Caspian States. The world's largest intercontinental sea/lake is well known for its wealth mineral and fuel resources and sturgeon stocks' the products of which (oil and caviar) are in constant demand on the world market. During the last half-century the Caspian Sea has been the focus of the scientific community concerned with its level fluctuations. We were, and still are, solving a two-faceted issue: to rescue the Caspian Sea and to rescue the population from the Caspian Sea. To rescue the Caspian Sea is to address a broad spectrum of environmental issues related primarily to water pollution by waste water and petroleum products. To rescue the population from the Caspian Sea means that an almost 2.5 m sea level rise in the last two decades has resulted in flooding of vast coastal areas deteriorating economic and social spheres of activity. Solutions to these issues are linked to the numerous mysterious aspects of recent Caspian Sea behavior. Regrettably, the collapse of the USSR has led to a decline of marine observations and control over the use of marine resources in the region. Coordinated international action on the protection of living marine resources have terminated, generating disastrous consequences.
This volume is based on the presentations and deliberations of an Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) "Caspian Sea: A Quest for Environmental Security" that was held on March 15-19, 1999, in Venice (Italy). The Workshop was sponsored by the NATO's Division for Scientific and Environmental Affairs, with additional support provided by the Trust for Mutual Understanding (USA). It was organized by Duke University's Center for International Development Research with the guidance of the International Committee of scientists from Russia, United States. Georgia and Italy and organizational assistance rendered by Venice International University. The Caspian Sea region is of profound importance from the perspective of global and regional environmental security. New geopolitical and economic circumstances have created a mixture of competition. reluctant collaboration, and legal, political, economic and ideological wrangling. There is an intense debate over how the Caspian and its resources should be divided among littoral states and how these resources are to be developed. While most littoral states and the international companies strive to develop the area's immense hydrocarbon potential, it is clear that the Caspian's unique and fragile ecosystem is at risk.
“The Caspian Sea Encyclopedia” is the second one in the new series of encyclo- dias about the seas of the former Soviet Union published by Springer-Verlag. The ?rst volume – “The Aral Sea Encyclopedia” was published by Springer in 2009. The series will be continued by “The Black Sea Encyclopedia” in 2010. Today the Caspian Sea is known to readers thanks to its oil and gas resources, sturgeon and caviar, signi?cant sea-level variations, socio-economic and political problems. The Caucasus and Central Asia (http://eurodialogue. org/?les/fckeditor_?les/Caspian-s- map2. png) vii viii Introduction For more than 250 years the Caspian Sea was shared by two states: Russia (the Soviet Union) and Persia (Iran). After the disintegration of the USSR in 1992, the new independent states of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have radically changed the political and economic situation in the region. In addition to Russia and Iran, who had determined the situation on the Caspian for a long period, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are now interested parties, beginning a new stage in the historical development of the Caspian region. This increase in the number of the Caspian legal entities from two to ?ve has given rise to a whole tangle of geopolitical, economic, international legal, ethnic and environmental problems, each of which demands its own approach and settlement mechanism.
Provides students with an in-depth historic and contemporary understanding of the causes, magnitude and implications of the different types of environmental crises in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Once the landlocked backwater between Iran and the Soviet Union, the Caspian has in the last ten years emerged as the epicentre of vast conflicting interests in a region where massive geopolitical issues converge with enormous energy resources and dramatic latent instability. Russia's conflict in Chechnya is a direct by-product of the strategic importance of the Caspian region. _Troubled Waters_ presents a comprehensive analysis of the political and economic dynamics of the Caspian basin. It examines the area's historical evolution and the diverse issues and players in what has become a modern variant of the Great Game' of the nineteenth century. Following a historical overview of the region and its oil industries, the book analyses the domestic politics and the foreign policies of the five states bordering the Caspian- Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. It further identifies all the external interests involved in the Caspian's political rivalries and control over its resources and territory, including the US, the major European powers, various nationalist movements, Islamic militants, multi-national corporations, NGOs and international financial institutions. These features, coupled with the political and economic risk assessment of the Caspian basin which this book provides, makes this a unique contribution to our understanding of a region which is strategically positioned at the territorial juncture of Russia, China, East Asia and the Middle East.
The U.S./Russian collaboration that used the Space Shuttle and the Mir Space Station as platforms for acquiring remote sensing information about the Earth between 1996 and 1998 produced significant scientific results on hydrology, land use, and changes in some of the Earth's most dynamic environments. Many of these outstanding images are presented here and compared with photographs taken during earlier missions, allowing detection of changes on the Earth's surface. Studies reported in this fascinating volume include observations of El Niño-related phenomena; fluctuating water levels of the Caspian and Aral Seas; smoke, dust, and aerosols in the atmosphere; urban land use changes; and drought in the southeastern United States and Mexico. This valuable information, and the techniques used to gather it, will form the basis for future remote sensing studies to be conducted from the International Space Station.
The opening of the Caspian Sea basin to Western investment following the breakup of the Soviet Union produced a major contest for access to the region's vast energy reserves on the part of powers as close as Russia, Turkey, and Iran, and as far away as Japan and the United States. Indeed, the struggle to exploit Caspian oil has been one of the most monumental geopolitical developments of the post-Cold War era as external powers vie for political, economic, and military influence in a region brimming not only with oil, but also with ethnic conflicts and historical animosities. The coming decade of rapidly increasing demand for energy will ensure the continued interest and engagement of external powers with often competing geopolitical agendas. Thus the geopolitical developments spawned by the opening of the Caspian Sea are likely to continue to far outweigh the actual impact of Caspian oil on world energy markets. This collection of essays by prominent scholars and international experts offers several important and often conflicting interpretations of the events unfolding along the shores of the world's oldest oil-producing region.
The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) was established as a means of raising worldwide public and political awareness of the vast, though frequently under-used, potential the Earth Sciences possess for improving the quality of life of the peoples of the world and safeguarding Earth’s rich and diverse environments. The International Year project was jointly initiated in 2000 by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the Earth Science Division of the United Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). IUGS, which is a Non-Governmental Organisation, and UNESCO, an Inter-Governmental Orga- sation, already shared a long record of productive cooperation in the natural sciences and their application to societal problems, including the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) now in its fourth decade. With its main goals of raising public awareness of, and enhancing research in the Earth sciences on a global scale in both the developed and less-developed countries of the world, two operational programmes were demanded. In 2002 and 2003, the Series Editors together with Dr. Ted Nield and Dr. Henk Schalke (all four being core members of the Management Team at that time) drew up outlines of a Science and an Outreach Programme. In 2005, following the UN proclamation of 2008 as the United Nations International Year of Planet Earth, the “Year” grew into a triennium (2007–2009).
Reflecting the particular concerns of each of the Caspian countries, this book offers a unique perspective on the prospects and priorities for long-term development round the Caspian basin.
The book shows how the new observations from satellites required advances in theory and influenced societal decision-making. Chapters have a review with an extensive reference list, making the book an excellent source of information for biological and physical oceanographers and atmospheric scientists.A large range of state-of-the art applications of satellite data (altimeter, color, infrared radiometer, scatterometer, synthetic aperture radar) visible in regional-to-global scale ocean studies integrating satellite and in-situ measurements with circulation models are covered in the book. Subjects include forecasting of surface waves, both swell and windsea, and surface wind; El Niño/La Niña; exchange of water masses between ocean basins, Rossby waves; eddies and filaments; fisheries; coastal ocean dynamics; phytoplankton dynamics; and ideas to measure sea surface salinity.