Caspian Sea’s Declining Water Levels Threaten Both Russia’s North-South Project And China’s  Belt-One Road Plan – OpEd

NASA image shows shrinking coastline of the Caspian Sea. Photo Credit: NASA

 March 14, 2025  

By Paul Goble

Declining water levels in the Caspian are reducing the amount of cargo ships on that body of water can carry and threatening Kazakhstan’s participation in both Russia’s North-South corridor and China’s One Belt-One Road project, both of which rely on shipping there, 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 Caspitan flotilla via the Volga-Dona Canal to take part in Putin’s war in Ukraine (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/water-level-of-caspian-sea-falling-at.html).

But while the debate continues about whether the decline will continue or be  reversed (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/russian-experts-concede-caspian-water.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/putin-worried-about-falling-water.html), 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 (casp-geo.ru/snizhenie-urovnya-kaspiya-negativno-vliyaet-na-paromnye-perevozki/).

And the developments have led Natalya Butyrina, a Kaspiisky Vestnik commentator, to conclude that Kazakhstan, which has been hit the hardest by the decline in Caspian 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 does continue to fall — and that appears to be the most likely course of events (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/russian-experts-concede-caspian-water.html)) — 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.

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .