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Каспинфо апрель 2004 |
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Название: ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ (на англ. яз) Главные Пункты: * CITES дал четырем пост советским странам бассейна Каспийского моря три месяца, чтобы предоставить убедительные доказательства того, что они предпринимают меры по охране популяции осетровых. В противном случае страны столкнутся с международным запретом на экспорт икры. * Посол Ирана в России в своем заявлении о геополитической ситуации на Каспии выделяет особое значение подписания Рамочной конвенции по защите морской среды. * Высокотоксичные отходы хвостохранилища Кошкар-Ата угрожают Каспию. (13.04.2004) Полный Текст ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ (на англ. яз) Russian Environmental Digest -- the world's major English-language press on environmental issues in Russia 22 - 28 March 2004, Vol. 6, No. 13 17 UN Gives Caspian States Deadline on Caviar Ban Moscow Times, March 23, 2004 By Christopher Pala Almaty, Kazakhstan -- The wildlife-protection arm of the United Nations last week gave four post-Soviet Caspian countries three months to provide convincing evidence they are taking measures to protect the world's last great population of sturgeon or face an international ban on caviar exports. Conservation enforcement agencies from the Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, known as CITES, said Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan needed to prove by June that they have complied with an agreement, signed in Paris in 2001, to protect the beluga, stellate and Russian sturgeon, which provide nearly all of the world's caviar. "If we find that they had not fully complied, caviar trade involving these four countries would stop," said John Sellar, the organization's senior enforcement officer, by telephone from Geneva, where the three-day meeting took place. A representative for a coalition of three environmental organizations -- the Natural Resources Defense Council, SeaWeb and the University of Miami Pew Institute for Ocean Science -- sharply criticized the delay, saying the four states had already amply demonstrated their inability or unwillingness to curb poaching and take other measures to prevent the sturgeon from being fished to extinction. "CITES has threatened to close down the fishery many times, but they don't seem to have the spine to do it," said The Pew Institute's Phaedra Doukakis, who attended the meeting. "Time is running out, particularly for the beluga." Caviar from the beluga, the largest and most endangered of the commercially harvested species, retails for $ 3.50 per gram in the West. The beluga can live for up to 100 years and weigh more than 1,800 kilograms. Overfishing of the beluga, which takes 18 years to reach sexual maturity, would damage stocks for years. CITES' Sellar said the four countries needed to provide more information on their own domestic caviar markets. "We know what's going on in the Caspian Sea, but we want to know what's going on in Moscow," he said, highlighting fears that beluga caviar may be exported illegally via Moscow. All four countries insist they are in full compliance with the Paris agreement. In Astrakhan, at the head of the Volga delta, a 6-meter-long stuffed beluga lies on display in the city museum, whose chief taxidermist estimates it must have weighed 1.8 tons. There and in Atyrau, on Kazakhstan's Ural River, the main other Caspian river used by spawning sturgeon, fishermen, fish scientists and market sellers agree on one thing: that each year there are fewer sturgeon. It is an open secret that poachers pay off fish wardens -- sometimes in advance, sometimes only when caught. As a result, officials in both cities admit privately that there has been no perceptible difference since the Paris agreement was signed three years ago. Last year, a prosecutor reported that in 2002 in the Atyrau region, where most of Kazakhstan's sturgeon poaching takes place, 2,669 illegal fishing devices were seized from 523 poachers, along with 11 tons of sturgeon and half a ton of caviar. Of these, 132 poachers were convicted. The average fine was $ 46, or about what market sellers say they pay poachers for 450 grams of caviar. The activities of the local anti-poaching law enforcement agencies, the prosecutor wrote, "do not justify the results," given that they have received large increases in hardware, ranging from boats to radios and camcorders. He was fired soon after issuing his report. *** Common Sea Principle Violation May Worsen Caspian Ecology ITAR-TASS News Agency, March 23, 2004 By Valery Agarkov The violation of the principle of the common sea "may deteriorate the ecological situation in the Caspian Sea," Iranian Ambassador to Russia Gholamreza Shafei told Itar-Tass on the eve of the upcoming ministerial meeting of the Caspian Five group in Moscow. He noted that the agenda of the meeting of foreign ministers of the Five group (Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) due in Moscow on April 5-7 "includes the preparation to the second summit in Teheran." "Under the agreements between Moscow and Teheran in 1921 and 1940 the Caspian was the common sea for the two countries," the ambassador recalled. "After 1991 this approach spread on five Caspian littoral states. This main principle "was confirmed again at the meeting of foreign ministers in Ashgabad in November 1996 at which emphasis was placed on the need of unanimity in the decision-making on the Caspian problems." However the Iranian side believes that "this principle has been ignored to a certain degree in the recent years over unilateral positions of some countries and their striving to begin the soonest use of the sea resources." Meanwhile some countries "began concluding agreements and carrying out works in the Caspian Sea." "This did not promote the solution to problems, but lead to greater contamination of the sea biosphere and poses a threat to biological resources including rare species of fauna," Gholamreza Shafei emphasized. Owing to various bilateral and multilateral steps of the littoral countries Iran believes that "all agreements can have effect only if they are approved by the Five group and positions of all countries are taken into account." Fortunately after the first summit in Ashgabad in 2002 attention to the Caspian problems has noticeably grown," Shafei pointed out. "The signing of the Convention on environmental protection last year was the first positive step in this direction," he remarked. *** =============================================== IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS ================================================ EURASIA: THE OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR CASPIAN STUDIES, TEHRAN (IICS). http://www.caspianstudies.com To subscribe to this list, send a blank e-mail to: eurasia-subscribe@topica.com To UNsubscribe send a blank e-mail to: eurasia-unsubscribe@topica.com DISCLAIMER: THE ARTICLES DISTRIBUTED ON THIS EMAIL MESSAGE ARE INTENDED FOR PRIVATE, NON-COMMERCIAL USE BY SUBSCRIBERS ONLY, AND SHOULD NOT BE RE-DISTRIBUTED. The International Institute for Caspian Studies does not endorse any product, service or statement on this email message. =============================================== IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS * IICS ================================================ Toxic waste threatens Caspian Sea By Marina Kozlova United Press International United Press International 3/25/2004 12:04 PM TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, March 25 (UPI) -- Vast quantities of radioactive and toxic wastes stored not far from the Caspian Sea threaten a nearby city and could infiltrate into the world's largest inland body of water, Kazakh scientists said. The environmental deterioration in Kazakhstan's Mangistau region began in the 1960s when the Soviet Union started extracting and processing uranium there. The ore was processed at a chemical hydro-metallurgical plant located not far from Aktau, the administrative center of the region. The Prikaspiiskii mining and chemical enterprise, as it was called, also included sulfuric acid and nitrogen fertilizer plants. A uranium tailings dump was created in the drain-free settling pool at Koshkar-Ata, 3 miles north of Aktau and 4.5 miles east of the Caspian. Since 1965, liquid radioactive, toxic and industrial wastes and unpurified ordinary domestic drains have been discharged into the 42-yard deep Koshkar-Ata repository, which has an area of 52 square miles. "Koshkar-Ata is filled with brine, containing an extended quantity of contaminants and heavy metals," said Kairat Kuterbekov, the scientific secretary of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Almaty, Kazakhstan's capital. Kuterbekov is the manager of the project called the "Overall Examination of Ecological Situation at the Toxic Wastes Storage 'Koshkar-Ata' and Development of Rehabilitation Actions." The brine at Koshkar-Ata contains up to 0.18 ounces of salts per a cubic foot, Kuterbekov told United Press International. The production process stopped in the early 1990s and Koshkar-Ata started to dry up. So far, some 13.8 square miles have dried up, creating toxic dust that is blown into the atmosphere. In 1991, the International Commission on Radiological Protection issued recommendations that included limiting radiation dosages to members of the public to less than 0.1 rem per year. A rem measures the amount of damage to human tissue from a dose of ionizing radiation. Across most of Koshkar-Ata, the exposure dose, as recorded by sensors, is 0.4 rems. In some of the area, the exposure is 1,500 micro-roentgens per hour -- equivalent to 13.0 rems per year. When the dump was active, in addition to liquid wastes, the Soviets buried 115 million tons of solid wastes, including 57 million tons of radioactive wastes, Kuterbekov said. The radiation exposure on those plots of land -- 5,000 micro-roentgens per hour -- exceed the limiting dose by more than 400 times. "The radioactive wastes are represented by a natural series of uranium-238; the most toxic among them are uranium-235, radium-226 and thorium-230," Kuterbekov explained. Uranium and its decay products, including thorium, radium and radon -- a radioactive gas -- can be dangerous substances if not properly stored or isolated. Yet local residents have been digging out the radioactive metal trying to sell it to scrap dealers. The dealers refuse to buy it because of its radioactivity, so the frustrated sellers discard it anywhere, Kuterbekov said. "A large quantity of heavy metals -- copper, zinc, nickel -- and rare-earth elements have been found in the bottom sediment," he added. Heavy metals can damage living creatures at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain. Last year, the effects of the radioactive and toxic dust were not as damaging to Aktau, a city with a population of 185,000 on the coast of the Caspian. However, 2003 was atypical because of a relatively large amount of precipitation and because the prevailing winds blew away from the city, Kuterbekov said. Underground water is another worry because there is the potential to contaminate the Caspian, he said. About 17 square miles of the tailing dump are still covered with water, and five countries surround the Caspian -- Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. A specialist, who did not want to be identified, told UPI that concentrations some elements -- including iron, molybdenum, manganese, cadmium, selenium, ammonium and fluorine -- have been found to exceed maximum permissible levels within 1.8 to 2.25 miles of the tailing dump in the Caspian direction. The repository represents "a huge and immediate threat to the Caspian ecosystem," Boris Golubov, a Russian scientist wrote in his article "The Caspian: Receptacle for Radiation" published in the quarterly "Give & Take" in 2001. Moreover, "in addition to "man-made" sources of radiation, the Caspian ecosystem collects and stores high levels of natural radioactive nuclides," Golubov wrote. "Caspian waters, bottom sediments, and living organisms contain levels of uranium five to seven times higher than those in other seas." "(The) situation of nuclear wastes in Kazakhstan is disastrous for the local people and the Caspian Sea in general," said Bahman Aghai Diba, a consultant on international law for the World Resources Company in McLean, Va. The nuclear wastes are kept in substandard conditions and there is possibility of infiltration into the sea, Aghai Diba told UPI. Scientists intend to supply soil to the former bottom to stimulate plant growth, Kuterbekov said, adding this way to solve the problem had been chosen because of it was relatively cheap. -- Marina Kozlova covers Central Asia for UPI Science News. Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International |