The problem of periodization of the development of environmental activities in the Caspian Sea in the post-Soviet period

Gapizov Zaur Rasulovich ORCID: 0000-0003-4515-4946 Applicant, Department of History of Neighboring Countries, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University 125167, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Krasnoarmeiskaya, 11/4 9605051@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The subject of this study is the stages of development of environmental protection activities in the Caspian Sea of five Caspian littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan – in the post-Soviet period of history. The purpose of the article is to present the author's periodization of the development of environmental activities in the Caspian Sea, qualitative characteristics of the selected stages and description and their specifics. The study used such methods of historical research as retrospective analysis, comparative analysis, document analysis, periodization method and systematic approach.

Such specialists as Sh.M. Aliyev, T. Barkeliev, E.E. Vylegzhanina, K.Z. Zainalova, I.S. Sonn, V.P. Ivanov, M.V. Pavlova, D.N. Panasenko, S.P. Petrov and others were engaged in environmental problems of the Caspian Sea and the Caspian region as a whole, as well as various aspects of the implementation of environmental protection activities, who presented there are significant scientific results in his works. Especially noteworthy are the modern works of the following authors: S.Y. Anapolsky ^[1], A.S. Lebedev, A.A. Ginoyan ^[2], V.V.Chernaya, N.V. Shatrova ^[3], G.G. Shinkaretskaya ^[4], etc. Various aspects of environmental protection activities within the waters of the seas are considered by foreign experts ^[5],[6],[7]. However, the analysis of scientific literature demonstrates the absence of fundamental works that comprehensively address the problem of the development of environmental activities in the Caspian Sea in the post-Soviet period. It is important to take into account here that the designated subject area in historical science was formed relatively recently. In addition, it is quite often possible to observe the political bias of the authors in scientific and analytical publications on this issue. Emphasizing the relevance of this study, it is important to point out that environmental and environmental issues are gradually becoming the cornerstone of modern international relations ^[8]. Observers have identified a number of global initiatives in the climate and environmental spheres, which may mark significant changes for the Caspian region as well.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing pollution of the waters of the seas and oceans everywhere in the world, which entails the degradation of underwater landscapes, the extinction of many biological species, a reduction in their diversity and a general decrease in the role of the World Ocean in fulfilling its global biospheric function — carbon dioxide absorption and oxygen production ^{[9, p. 6]}. The environmental problems of the Caspian Sea are among the most difficult in the post–Soviet space, since the economies of four post-Soviet states - Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan - are "tied" to the resources of the Caspian Sea ^[10]. Immediately after gaining independence and sovereignty, the post-Soviet states, during the process of political transit and integration in a new capacity into the system of international relations and the world market, were primarily concerned with the problem of ensuring national security, including energy ^[11],[12], as well as the development of national geostrategies ^[13]. Quite quickly, including due to the Soviet tradition, the newly independent states realized that national security can be ensured provided that natural environments are preserved and national environmental protection systems are built. As experts point out, "the natural environment should be included in the system of socio-economic relations as the most valuable component of the national heritage. The formation and implementation of the socio-economic development strategy of the country and the state policy in the field of ecology should be interconnected, since the health, social and environmental well-being of the population are in inseparable unity" ^{[14, p. 22]}.

As mentioned above, the process of political transit of the newly independent States was associated with building international relations, solving vital security problems in various spheres. This process was progressive in nature and was determined primarily by the search for mutually acceptable solutions in those areas where the national interests of neighboring countries were very tightly intertwined and development based on mutually beneficial cooperation was impossible without the development of common rules of the game. Such problematic areas include the so-called "Caspian node", which includes not only the problem of determining the legal status of the reservoir ^[15],[16], but also the issue related to the protection of the natural environment of the Caspian Sea.

As you know, the study of any complex social process is carried out with the involvement of a variety of methods and techniques, among which the method of periodization occupies an important place. It is periodization that forms the basis for structuring historical knowledge. "Identification of distinctive features, characteristic features, trends, patterns in a particular period is one of the main tasks of historical education" ^{[17, p. 216]}. Therefore, it can be assumed that the periodization of the history of environmental activities in the Caspian Sea will allow structuring not only the process of studying this problem, but also significantly advance in the analysis of those new characteristics of the object of study that it acquires as it approaches modernity. The use of the periodization method also makes it possible to effectively identify certain patterns in the development of the process under study.

The analysis of sources and scientific literature on the subject of the study allowed us to identify the following three stages of the development of environmental activities in the Caspian Sea in the post-Soviet period: the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. The proposed periodization is based on qualitative characteristics of key events in the development of environmental protection activities, the evolution of approaches of the Caspian states to the implementation of these activities ^[18] and in cooperation within the so-called "Caspian Five", including Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

The lower boundary of the first stage (the 1990s) is associated with the emergence of a new geopolitical reality in the Caspian region, defined by the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of new independent states. The collapse of the former Soviet-Iranian system of agreements on the Caspian Sea necessitated the creation of a new system of agreements on cooperation in the environmental sphere between Iran and the new post-Soviet participants in international relations. Until 1995, many ideas were expressed about new formats of cooperation in the Caspian Sea, often within the framework of various projects related to the determination of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. In particular, during this stage, the Caspian countries declared the basic principles of environmental cooperation in the form of various declarations adopted at a high level. At the same time, the Commission on Biological Resources was established and the main forms of environmental cooperation with international organizations in the region were tested. In the second half of the decade, the Caspian countries clarified their positions on the problems of the region, including the exploitation of the resource base of the Caspian Sea and its shelf. During this period, there was a rapprochement of the positions of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan, culminating in the conclusion of a bilateral agreement (Agreement between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation on the delimitation of the bottom of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights to subsurface use, Moscow, July 6, 1998). In addition, in the second half of the 1990s, the development process continued draft environmental agreements formulated at the beginning of the first post-Soviet decade (this process developed especially actively in 1999). At the same time, organizational forms of environmental cooperation in the region were created with the participation of leading international organizations ^{[14, p. 31]}.

The second stage (2000s) was associated with the intensification of the process of searching for an acceptable legal basis for solving regional problems, including cooperation in the environmental sphere ^{[14, p. 31]}. This was expressed in the active preparation and then signing in 2003 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, known as the Tehran Convention (Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea dated 04.10.2003). The process of its ratification took some time, so the document entered into force in 2006. The Tehran Convention should be considered as an actual and at the same time promising legal instrument of regional cooperation in the environmental sphere and as a means of attracting national legal instruments to solving common problems in the Caspian Sea. The key feature of the Tehran Convention was that it recognized the ecological integrity of the sea and regulated environmental activities in the Caspian Sea in conditions when the provisions of existing maritime conventions are illegal for direct application here. In addition, the Tehran Convention included the principle of accessibility of information to the public ^{[19, p. 26]}, which, in turn, contributed to the formation of a special discourse on Caspian issues ^[20]. During the same period, there was a series of agreements between post-Soviet Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on the principles of delimitation of the Caspian Sea bottom (Agreement between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the Delimitation of the Caspian Sea Bottom between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Republic of Azerbaijan dated November 29, 2001; Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the Delimitation of Adjacent Sections of the Caspian Sea bottom from September 23, 2002), as well as discussion of the problems of demilitarization of the Caspian Sea ^[21]. Thus, the second stage of the development of environmental protection activities in the Caspian Sea is characterized by initiatives to collectively solve environmental problems and protect the natural diversity of the sea.

The third stage (2010s) marked a significant advance in the creation of a system of environmental protection activities in the Caspian Sea. The lower boundary of the stage was marked by the achievement of a five-sided agreement on the implementation of practical actions within the framework of the Tehran Convention. And already in 2012, the Environmental Monitoring Program (PMOS) was adopted The Protocol on the Protection of the Caspian Sea from Pollution from Land-based Sources and as a Result of Activities carried out on Land was signed as a basis for regional cooperation. These documents made it possible to implement in practice those projects and agreements that were generated by the Caspian countries within the framework of the first two stages outlined above. Thus, in order to assess the state of environmental safety of the Caspian Sea in 2013, a comprehensive plan of measures aimed at improving the environmental safety of the Caspian Sea was proposed. The integrated approach underlying the plan is based on the improvement of qualitative and the transition to quantitative assessment, which should have greatly facilitated the decision-making process on the environmental safety of the sea. However, the most important for the development of environmental protection activities in the framework of the third stage was the signing of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea on August 12, 2018 in Aktau within the framework of the Fifth Caspian Summit – the so-called "Caspian Constitution", the importance of which is difficult to overestimate ^[22]. According to the Convention, the activities of the Caspian States are based on the principles of protecting the natural environment of the Caspian Sea. The Convention essentially marked a new era of cooperation in the Caspian Sea, which practically coincided with the border of the next decade.

As can be seen, the proposed periodization of the development of environmental activities was based on qualitative changes in the awareness of the Caspian problems by the Caspian states, the joint search for solutions and their implementation through the implementation of agreements reached, which took place in the field of international relations at the regional level, that is, within the framework of the Caspian subsystem of international relations. This distinguishes the proposed periodization from the generally accepted approaches, for example, Eurocentric or tied to the change of power in key countries of the region, in particular, in Russia, etc. Thus, the Eurocentric approach to periodization is functional when analyzing processes of a global or, less often, regional scale (but not a sub–regional one, where other, not always obvious factors may operate). In turn, periodization, built in relation to the terms of the presidency of prominent statesmen, the party majority in national parliaments, legislative reforms, etc. it also has limited effectiveness and, accordingly, representativeness within the framework of such specific objects of study as environmental protection activities in relation to a natural object of general or limited international use.

Thus, this article presents the author's periodization of the process of development of environmental protection activities in the Caspian Sea, as well as a qualitative characteristic of the selected stages and a description of their specifics, which constitutes the scientific novelty of the study. Comparison with common approaches to periodization showed the advantage of the proposed approach, which is based on the development of relations between the national states of the Caspian region within the framework of the subsystem of international relations, characterized as the so-called "Caspian node". Considering the course of the "Caspian Five" on non-interference of third countries in the affairs of the Caspian region, the proposed author's approach to periodization seems quite promising.