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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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