Caspian Sea: State of the Environment 2019

Following the DPSIR methodology, the report provides a brief description of the region’s cur- rent socioeconomic situation, including the state of the population. The report reveals that certain industries, specifi- cally mining (in particular the oil and gas sector), fishing, agriculture and tourism industries, are driving forces, influencing the state of the Caspi- an Sea’s environment. Information on indirect natural driving forces that are affecting the state of the Caspian Sea’s marine and coastal environment, related to cli- mate change and sea level fluctuations, which are characteristic of this closed water body, is of par- ticular importance. The main objective of the state of the environ- ment reporting is to assess the current state of the Caspian Sea’s environmental and social con- ditions and coastal areas. Such information could serve as a decision-making tool for the Parties to the Tehran Convention, with the reporting pro- vided by the Contracting Parties themselves. De- scribing the general situation in the Caspian Sea basin and analysing compliance with the Con- interim Secretariat of the Tehran Convention by national experts recommended by the relevant ministries and departments of the Caspian litto- ral states responsible for collecting and processing the necessary information, as well as preparing the report, under the coordination and with the organizational support of GRID-Arendal and the financial support of British Petroleum (BP) Azerbaijan. National environmental informa- tion specialists of the web-based Caspian Envi- ronmental Information Center (CEIC) of the Tehran Convention assisted in the collection and systematization of information. The Working Group on Monitoring and As- sessment of the Tehran Convention also con- tributed to the development of the report. The editor-in-chief, contracted by GRID-Aren- dal, was responsible for consolidating national materials into a single document.

requested that the interim Secretariat of the Con- vention coordinate the preparation of this report. The main aim of this second report is to provide the necessary information on changes and trends in the state of the marine and coastal environ- ment of the Caspian region for the 2012–2016 period, based on regular reporting of the Caspi- an littoral states and other literature sources. This report presents the current state of the Caspian Sea’s marine environment, taking into account sea level fluctuations and its pollution, including pollution from land-based sources, pursuant to the provisions of the Tehran Con- vention and its protocols. The report is based on the United Nations En- vironment Programme (UNEP) DPSIR meth- odology (Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Im- pacts-Reponses), which was successfully applied in the first report of the interim Secretariat of the Tehran Convention on the state of the Caspian Sea’s environment for the 2007–2010 period and shows the relationship between human activities, the state of and trends in the environment and the well-being of society. For information. In the preparation of both the first and second State of the Environment of the Caspian Sea Report, the interim Secre- tariat of the Tehran Convention, administered by the UNEP Regional Office for Europe, was assisted by GRID-Arendal, a UNEP Collabo- rating Centre of Excellence in the field of envi- ronmental assessment, training and informa- tion exchange. The first State of the Environment of the Caspi- an Sea Report was developed under the project The Caspian Sea: Restoring Depleted Fisheries and Consolidation of a Permanent Region- al Environmental Governance Framework (CaspEco) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The preparation of this second report was carried out within the framework of the activities of the

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