Environment and Security: Transforming risks into cooperation

Eastern Caspian

35

Environment and Security

tion decreased tenfold and cattle and meat production dropped substantially, though in 2000–7 the trend was once more upward. In Mangystau province, where the role of ag- riculture was much less important than in Atyrau, the contribution of the agricultural sector to GRP – essentially cattle breeding – dropped from 4% to less than 1% 35 . The amount of land under cultivation in Atyrau province fell from 80 000 ha in 1990 to around 2 000 ha in 2005–7, and in Man- gystau from 1 500 ha to 50 ha (Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on statistics). The number of sheep and goats decreased two to threefold. Many areas of cropland and pasture especially in Atyrau were flood- ed due to a rise in the sea level. Other areas were significantly degraded by overgrazing or industrial development. As a result of these factors and changes in land use pri- orities, the area legally designated for agri- cultural use has substantially declined. Over the same period fishery output from the Caspian Sea and the Volga-Ural deltas decreased by a factor of two to three. Fish catches in Atyrau fell from more than 20 000 tonnes in the early 1990s to 15 000 tonnes in the 2000s. In Mangystau catches plummet- ed from 9 000 tonnes to 500 tonnes (Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on statistics). Sturgeon catches dropped dramatically, by a factor of more than 20, despite increas- ing efforts to farm the fish. Illegal poaching of sturgeon and black caviar, the cash com- modities for many rural coastal communities, has aggravated the productivity losses of the Caspian’s biological resources (Akhmetov 2006; CEP 2002). The world food crisis may amplify the potentially fragile situation in the eastern Caspian region with declining agri- cultural and fish production or may be also an opportunity for reversing the local trends. The trends described so far underline the regional economy’s increasing dependence on the energy sector and the impact of hu-

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