Assignment: The Caspian crisis

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world. Bordered by Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan it spans 371,000 square kilometres and bridges Europe and Central Asia. It’s fed mainly by Russia’s Volga and Ural rivers and the sea is not only rich in oil and gas but is also home to numerous rare and endemic species, including the Caspian seal and 90% of the world’s remaining wild sturgeon. But the Caspian Sea is in crisis. Climate change and the damming of Russia’s rivers are causing the coastline to recede at an alarming rate. The sea’s levels have fallen by a metre in the last 4 years, a trend likely to increase. Recent studies have shown that the levels could drop between 9 and 18 metres by 2100. Last June Kazakh government officials declared a state of emergency over the Caspian. Iran has also raised the alarm with the UN. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent travels to Kazakhstan for Assignment to report from the shores of the Caspian Sea on what can be done to prevent an environmental disaster.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for choosing to listen to assignment on the documentary podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:05.0	In this episode I'm reporting from Kazakhstan where I've come to find out why the Caspian Sea is shrinking at unprecedented speed and what it means for this region.
0:17.0	Right, can we get up here?
0:21.0	I'm just climbing up some wooden steps onto this old pier. The bottom few steps are missing
0:27.1	because, well, it's not really a pier anymore because it's nowhere near the sea.
0:31.2	Asamat, do you remember when this pier was in the sea, as it should be?
0:37.0	Well, we were here in around 2006, 2008.
0:42.0	They'd been New LeW new limits and other young people.
0:45.0	You'd still lots of people sitting here and walking along the pier.
0:49.0	Asimat Salzen-Baeev is an activist and social media influencer from the Kazakh city of Actau on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water.
1:00.0	A compact 34 year old with short black hair and a boyish face
1:04.5	Azamat posts about local environmental and social issues,
1:08.0	particularly what's happening to the sea.
1:11.0	Let them the poison you noches this. We'd be sitting here talking in the summer until
1:18.1	late at night. It was a very popular place, especially in the evenings, in summer or around lunchtime.
1:25.0	Young people of the city would gather and from here would stand on the railings and jump
1:29.3	into the water.
1:31.2	Adam at saying that as a teenager he used to stand on this pier and dive into the clear blue waters of the Caspian Sea.
1:39.0	And that is staggeringly hard to believe because from where I'm standing at the end of this old wooden pier
1:44.4	it's at least 70 meters to where the waves are breaking along the shoreline.
1:49.5	The sea has receded that far in less than 20 years.
1:54.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Antonio Bolingbroke-Kent and for assignment
	...

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