Caspian Sea: State of the Environment 2019

2. Methodology This report aims to describe the overall situation in the Caspian Sea, bringing together reports from the five littoral states and other academic sources. This State of the Environment of the Caspian Sea Report is based on recent assess- ment reports prepared in accordance with the decision of the third Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Tehran Convention, which took place in 2011, in Aktau, Kazakhstan. While the original intention was to describe the over- all situation in each chapter, national experts instead focused on the specific situation in each country and did not integrate information into an overview. This report applies the DPSIR framework , which identifies the relationship between human activ- ities, the state of and trends in the environment and the well-being of society. • Driving forces of environmental change (e.g. demography, industrial production) • Pressures on the environment (e.g. discharges of wastewater) • State of the environment (e.g. climate change, water quality) • Impacts on the population, the economy, eco- systems (e.g. water unsuitable for drinking) • Response of the society (e.g. watershed protec- tion) (SoE 2011). A UNDP decision framework for assessment methodologies (2016), which takes into account the type of assessment, available time, resources and the purpose of the assessment, was used to prepare assessments carried out for this report. Three main methods were used for the state of the environment assessments: indicator-based assessments, literature-based assessments and expert consultation-based assessments. These three methods are not exclusive and a combination of the methods could be used. For chapters of the report that have sufficient data and information available, a methodology based on indicators or literature sources could be applied, while chapters with insufficient ref-

erence data could be developed based on expert information. The method selected depends on the type of in- formation available and the budget, in consider- ation of the following questions: • Are existing assessments available that enable a synthesized approach to be used for the as- sessment or sections of the assessment? • Are recent data or literature available that en- able an analysis approach to be used for the assessment (or sections of the assessment)? • Are there knowledgeable experts available on the different subjects of the marine assessment (e.g. biodiversity and ecosystems, the physical and socioeconomic aspects of the marine en- vironment)? The DPSIR approach was used in the 2011 State of the Environment of the Caspian Sea Report and was also applied for this report. Results from the 2011 report were used as the basis for this re- port, which focuses on developments from 2012 to 2016. For the development of this report, existing and new data and information collected in connec- tion with the preparation of the CEIC report were used.

17