Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Will Caspian Sea become another Aral?
Indo-Asian News Service Tashkent, June 30
The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water on earth, is in danger of turning into an environmental dead zone, says UPI.
This is a development whose impact would be felt throughout Central Asia and Eastern Europe, scientists warn.
Five countries -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan -- surround the Caspian but wastes from Russia's industrial facilities carried down the Volga River provide the sea with the most pollution.
The region's oil reserves are estimated at more than 200 billion barrels, which puts it in second place after the Middle East. Exploration and exploitation of oil fields account for another major component of the pollution.
>From an environmental standpoint, Azerbaijan's oil facilities are among the
worst in the world, said Bahman Aghai Diba, a consultant on international
law for the World Resources Company in Virginia.
Azerbaijan has been using oil resources both within and close to the Caspian for about 80 years.
A rise in the sea's level also has been causing problems.
For example, between 1978 and 1995, between 700 and 1,200 oil wells have been flooded in Kazakhstan, said Alexander Bolshov, a consultant for the Atyrau branch office of the Kazakh agency for applied ecology.
"Nobody knows an exact number of flooded oil wells," Bolshov said. Oil is leaking out of some wells, he added.
Along with seals, sturgeons - fish used for food and the eggs necessary for the caviar industry - are dying in the Caspian in large quantities.
The reason, Bolshov said, is migration of toxic substances up the food chain - a process that tends to concentrate those substances in creatures at the top.
Illegal and unregulated fishing has reduced the sturgeon stocks by more than 80 percent in the Caspian.
The US government is considering declaring some types of the caviar producing fish as endangered species.
People will finally kill the Caspian if the present pollution trend continues, said Hamid Amirebrahimi, director of the South Caspian Institution for Environmental Services in Tonekabon, Iran.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.