The Case of The Southern Caucasus

Environment and Security / 7

Preface / Introduction

CSIS Statemen’s Forum “After the rose revolution: building Georgia’s future”. Zurab Zhvania, Prime Minister of Georgia, April 26, 2004. www.csis.org/ruseura/040426_zhvania_transcript.pdf “There [is] … much more willingness to look at ways for regional cooperation, to create more of the spirit that we are living in one region and we should enjoy cooperation between ourselves and not just keep the South Caucasus as a battlefield, as a field for constant confrontation between us.”

The report that follows briefly presents a preliminary as- sessment of environment and security linkages in the Southern Caucasus, carried out at the request of the host governments and in consultation with national experts. Its purpose is to establish the parameters for follow-up action by national authorities and international partners. This report contains a preliminary account of the ENVSEC Initiative’s findings in the Southern Caucasus countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. It is the distillation of national assessment reports, environmental, economic and social data collection and inputs from a technical regional workshop held in Tbilisi in November 2003 and national consultations held in Yerevan (May 10-11), Tbilisi (May 14-15) and Baku (May 17-18) in 2004. The consultations drew upon representatives from ministries of Foreign Af- fairs, Environment, Defence, Health, Agriculture, National Security, from national parliaments and from civil society, who identified what they believed to be predominant envi- ronment and security concerns in their countries. The sections that follow present the results of the consulta- tions and data-gathering exercises and identify some pri- ority environment and security risk factors, at the regional and national levels. A multi-year work programme will be elaborated in consultation with host governments for fol- low-up by UNDP, UNEP and OSCE.