Experts: Declining Caspian Sea Levels Threaten Russia and China’s Key Projects

Declining water levels in the Caspian Sea are limiting the cargo capacity of ships operating in the region and threatening Kazakhstan's involvement in both Russia's North-South corridor and China's One Belt-One Road project, which depend on shipping through the Caspian, according to experts in the region.

The water level of the Caspian has been falling in recent decades and has already had an impact on Moscow's ability to moves ships of the Caspian flotilla via the Volga-Dona Canal to take part in Putin's war in Ukraine, The Caspian Post reports citing foreign media.

But while the debate continues about whether the decline will continue or be reversed and new data suggest that it is already having a broader and deleterious impact on trade routes.

Experts from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are reporting that declining water levels on the Caspian have reduced the amount of cargo ships using that body of water can carry by 20 percent or more and restricting the capacity or even forcing the closure of some of their ports.

And thee developments have led Natalya Butyrina, a Kaspiisky Vestnik commentator, to conclude that Kazakhstan, which has been hit the hardest by the decline in Caspitan water levels -- portions of its coastline have receded more than 50 km in recent times -- may have to pull out of both Russia's and China's corridor projects.

In that event, both Moscow and Beijing would have to turn to the region's railways and highway networks, neither of which currently carry the amount of cargo each hopes for and both of which would require years and perhaps decades to expand to the point where they could.

Consequently, if the water level of the Caspian doe continue to fall -- and that appears to be the most likely course of events -- these two major projects will be in trouble, restricted not by the actions of other countries but by the drying up of a sea few had ever thought possible until very recently.