On December 25, 2024, Azerbaijan Airways flight 8432 crashed, killing 38 folks. Preliminary studies recommend the aircraft was shot at by Russian air defenses, forcing it to deviate from its deliberate flight path from Baku to Grozny. The plane limped throughout the Caspian Sea and crashed wanting a runway close to Aktau, Kazakhstan.
Coincidentally, the flight’s level of departure, Baku, and the town near its crash web site, Aktau, are the 2 important ports of the Trans-Caspian Worldwide Route (TITR), also called the Center Hall. This commerce route connects China to Europe via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkiye.
For Europe, commerce alongside this hall has change into more and more necessary to realize entry to Chinese language items, in addition to Central Asian vitality sources and significant uncooked supplies, whereas bypassing sanction-stricken Russia and Iran. The EU has invested considerably in Center Hall commerce, with an Funding Discussion board in January 2024 attracting 10 billion euros for the event of sustainable transport connectivity in Central Asia.
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan particularly have hoped to draw the long-term funding wanted for the enlargement of the logistical amenities wanted to extend commerce volumes. China has already poured vital funding into each the ports of Aktau and Baku. Due to infrastructure enhancements, the amount of cargo transported alongside the Center Hall rose by 63 p.c within the first 11 months of 2024 to 4.1 million tons. Kazakhstan hopes to additional expand the capability of the Caspian ports of Aktau and Kuryk to 30 million tons by 2030 – a sevenfold improve from present ranges.
Regardless of these rosy figures, vital challenges stay. The Caspian Sea, positioned on the coronary heart of the Center Hall, nonetheless is a significant impediment to enhancing regional connectivity. Unresolved authorized disputes, regional safety points, and steadily declining water ranges might all inhibit this commerce route from realizing its financial potential.
Caspian Sea Map (Wikimedia Commons)
Authorized Points
For a lot of the twentieth century, solely two international locations had entry to the Caspian Sea: the Soviet Union and Iran. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, 4 new littoral states emerged – Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan – necessitating a brand new authorized association for the division of the ocean. All sought to realize nationwide management over a most seabed space, hoping to safe entry to offshore oil and gasoline deposits.
Years of legal bickering adopted. Iran proposed a condominium strategy, which might give it entry to wealthy hydrocarbon fields between Iran and Azerbaijan. Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan promoted a division based mostly on the median line principle. These three international locations signed a trilateral settlement in 2003, dividing the northern part of the Caspian seabed in response to a modified median line (MML). Iran and Turkmenistan rejected the MML precept for the division of the southern Caspian Sea, as this would go away them with a smaller seabed space in comparison with the condominium strategy.
The 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, though a significant breakthrough, didn’t present an answer to this drawback. As a substitute, the signatories delegated the issue to future negotiations between the littoral states. The treaty additionally didn’t assist overcome obstacles in regards to the building of submarine cables and pipelines wanted to spice up oil and gasoline exports from Central Asia, such because the Trans-Caspian Pipeline.
Below the 2018 Conference, littoral states are solely allowed to assemble seabed infrastructure supplied that these initiatives adjust to the environmental requirements laid down within the Framework Conference for the Safety of the Marine Atmosphere of the Caspian Sea, which was signed in 2003. Often known as the Tehran Convention, this was the first legally-binding regional settlement signed by all Caspian littoral states.
Russia and Iran have repeatedly invoked the Tehran Conference to successfully block the development of pipelines connecting Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. This raises questions on whether or not Russia and Iran might once more invoke environmental considerations to dam the event of different trans-Caspian initiatives, akin to a planned electricity cable and a hydrogen pipeline from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan. Due to growing tensions with the West, Moscow and Tehran are unlikely to grant Europe entry to different vitality sources.
Militarization of the Caspian Sea
Amid an absence of authorized progress on seabed delimitation, a variety of incidents occurred between the littoral states. In 2001, disagreements between Iran and Azerbaijan over the event of Caspian hydrocarbon fields almost led to a military confrontation. Additional tensions arose between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijani gunboats threatened worldwide oil firm ships engaged on behalf of Turkmenistan on at the least two events in 2008.
Ongoing disputes resulted in a sluggish however regular arms race. Within the Caspian stability of naval energy, Russia nonetheless holds a lot of the playing cards. Because the Soviet Union’s authorized successor state, it inherited three-quarters of all ships from the Soviet Caspian naval stock. Because the begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, further ships have entered the Caspian following a reported partial withdrawal of materiel from the Black Sea Fleet to the Caspian by way of the Volga-Don Canal.
Others have additionally invested in increasing their respective fleets. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have each enlisted Turkish delivery firms within the enlargement of their fleets. Iran introduced its second homegrown warship within the Caspian in 2023, after the primary had sunk in a storm simply off the coast in 2018. Azerbaijan, after its reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, can be considering reallocating funds to renewing its getting older naval stock.
Since 2022, the Caspian Sea has served as a launching pad for bombers and cruise missiles towards Ukraine. In response, the Ukrainian army managed to strike the primary Russian naval base in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, with a kamikaze drone in early November 2024. The assault reportedly broken the flotilla’s flagship together with a number of different vessels.
These hostilities, mixed with Russia taking pictures down Azerbaijan Airways flight 8432, are a possible menace to regional safety within the Caspian Sea. This might deter long-term investments in commerce and infrastructure improvement.
Declining Water Ranges
The Caspian’s steadily declining water ranges are one other trigger for concern. During the last twenty years, these have already dropped by 1.7 meters. A 2020 examine published in Nature initiatives a lower of an extra 9 to 18 meters by the top of the century. Kazakhstan particularly is closely affected; the northern a part of the Caspian Sea is the shallowest, and right here the shoreline has already receded by as much as 50 kilometers. On June 8, 2023, Kazakhstan formally declared a state of emergency over the low water stage of the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in August 2024 called the shrinking of the Caspian Sea “catastrophic,” and the difficulty was additional discussed at a roundtable occasion at COP29 in Baku.
Whereas considerations a couple of drop in water ranges are shared by all littoral states, there is no such thing as a settlement on its trigger. To date, governments within the area have principally pointed to the pure cycle of water stage fluctuations and thereby underplayed their very own duty, or that of different states. But human interference has undoubtedly contributed to the present environmental issues. Russia, for instance, built a collection of huge dams on the Volga, which accounts for about 80 p.c of the Caspian’s influx. The influx is decreased by Russian withdrawals for irrigation and consuming water functions. Local weather change plays an extra function. Annual precipitation is reducing within the Caspian and the Volga catchment space, whereas evaporation charges have gone up considerably. Water ranges might additional decline via desalination in Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.
In Kazakhstan, large-scale dredging has already began to maintain Aktau and Kuryk open to ships. Regardless of these efforts, ships are nonetheless compelled to go away port solely partially loaded due to the shallower waters. The substantial prices of dredging and restricted cargo capability per ship are already growing general prices of delivery throughout the Caspian, making the Center Hall as an entire much less enticing. In the long term, the projected decreases of water ranges by 2100 might even make lots of the Caspian ports wholly inaccessible.
Going Ahead: Cooperation and Competitors Alongside the Center Hall
On the one hand, Russia and Iran have little curiosity in strengthening trans-Caspian connectivity. Creating new commerce routes and oil and gasoline infrastructure would compete immediately with their current corridors and pipelines. Furthermore, via funding, each China and Turkiye are increasing their regional affect within the Caspian basin.
However, Russia and Iran have a lot to realize from maintaining trans-Caspian commerce shifting. The Caspian Sea is an important a part of the North-South Corridor linking Russia to Iran. Bilateral commerce is more and more necessary for these two sanctioned international locations, and a considerable a part of Iran’s arms deliveries to Russia is probably going shipped throughout the Caspian.
The Ukraine warfare has additionally deepened Russia’s ties with Azerbaijan. Baku has change into important to Russian vitality exports, sanctions evasion, and for maintaining a land bridge open to Iran. Though the downing of the Azerbaijani airliner has dented this necessary relationship, Russia has little interest in irritating Azerbaijan’s ambitions to develop Center Hall commerce.
In the meantime, the naval stability of energy within the area is shifting. Whereas Russia’s Caspian flotilla stays the most important, with far superior weapons techniques, its supremacy is slowly eroded because of the declining water ranges: Russia’s warships within the Caspian are the most important of all navy vessels within the area, requiring comparatively deep waters to function successfully. With the warfare in Ukraine ongoing, Russia is unlikely to prioritize adapting its fleet to those altering circumstances.
In contrast, Kazakhstan at present possesses a rising fleet of shallow draft ships which might be better equipped to function within the shallow northern a part of the Caspian Sea. Turkiye particularly performs an lively function in serving to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan to develop their fleets and develop their general army capabilities, via supplying ships and internet hosting exercises. This provides smaller Caspian states the chance to develop their armed forces extra independently from Russia.
In an try to curb one of many underlying issues enabling this improvement, Russia along with different littoral states is expected to debate declining water ranges throughout the upcoming Convention of Events to the Tehran Conference, which is about to happen in 2025. In any case it’s unlikely that both Russia or Iran can be keen to surrender their efficient environmental veto beneath the Tehran Conference with reference to the development of submarine pipelines and cables.
In sum, there are nonetheless many obstacles forward for trans-Caspian commerce and infrastructure improvement. Though beneath the present geopolitical circumstances, the Center Hall may appear a horny choice, the littoral states every face their very own interconnected challenges that would very properly change into unmanageable over time, as pursuits diverge on necessary regional subjects.
