Caspian Sea littoral states discuss environment issues of sea in Ashgabat
Baku, May 30 (AZERTAC). The fifth session of the conference of the parties to the Framework Convention for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea is being held in Ashgabat, a message of the event's organizers from the Turkmen side said.
The forum, attended by the delegations from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, will last until May 30.
“The main purpose of the meeting is to discuss and agree on the most important basic documents for the Tehran Convention in order to ensure a reliable system of environmental protection of the planet's largest inland water reservoir, the Caspian Sea," the organizers' message said.
The session is being held by Turkmenistan's Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Nature Protection and the State Enterprise on the Caspian Sea Issues under the President of Turkmenistan.
The event is being held with the assistance of the Interim Secretariat of the Tehran Convention at the Regional Office of the UN Environment Program for Europe (ROE UNEP).
The meeting participants underscored that the Caspian Sea region is one of the most important geopolitical and economic centers in Eurasia and is a powerful energy, transportation and communications hub.
The intensive development of the sea coast, high growth rates of the oil and gas industry, the increased network of pipelines and transportation routes, without which the regional economic development is impossible, stipulated the need for establishing the international cooperation, as well as in the field of preserving the ecological welfare, biological diversity, rational use of the richest resources of this unique natural complex.
The international cooperation is based on clear legal standards, equality and mutual respect for the interests of all Caspian-littoral countries, according to the sides.
"This ecological forum is intended to preserve abundant bio-resources of the Caspian Sea, ensure a level of their use, meeting the interests of cooperation in the field of environmental protection of the Caspian countries," according to a statement.
The Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea was signed in Tehran on November 4, 2003. Moreover, the Caspian-littoral countries also signed two protocols, namely, Protocol on Regional Preparedness, Response and Cooperation in case of Oil Pollution Incidents (the third session of the conference of the sides in Aktau, Kazakhstan , 2011 ) and the Protocol on Protection of the Caspian Sea from land-based sources of pollution as a result of land-based activities (the fourth session of the conference of the sides in Moscow , Russian Federation, 2012 ) .
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