Running Dry: Caspian Crisis And Water Squeeze On Caucasus

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) We can no longer soothe ourselves with the idea that what's happening around us is just a random string of freak weather events or temporary natural glitches. What's unfolding is not chaos-it's a new architecture of the world, one where vulnerability has become the baseline and risk is an everyday reality. This isn't some distant forecast dreamed up by futurists. It's happening right now, in real time, demanding a clear-eyed gaze, ruthless logic, and urgent action. We're stepping into an era where survival depends on how quickly we react and how sharply we analyze-not just to preserve stability, but to secure the very possibility of a future.

The Caspian Sea: A Closed System on the Edge

The Caspian-the world's largest inland body of water-has always been a case study in how closed ecosystems buckle under climate and human pressure. Its levels have swung wildly over the centuries. But what's happening now is something different, and scientists are sounding the alarm.

Since the late 1990s, satellite data from the GRACE mission and its successors have tracked one of the planet's most dramatic losses of water mass in a major body of water. The Caspian has dropped more than a meter and a half in just two decades. And the outlook is grim: a 2020 study in Communications Earth & Environment warned that by the end of this century, the sea could plunge another 9 to 18 meters under realistic climate and emissions scenarios.

Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research agree on the culprits:

Rising evaporation driven by surging surface temperatures. The Caspian region is warming much faster than the global average. Shrinking inflows from its feeder rivers-especially the Volga, which provides up to 80 percent of the sea's freshwater supply. The Volga basin is getting squeezed by shifts in rainfall and ballooning human use.

When the Water Goes, So Does the Economy

The economic and ecological fallout from the Caspian's decline is systemic and brutal.

• Shipping and trade. Port depths at Aktau, Baku, Turkmenbashi, and Makhachkala are falling fast. Reports from the International Association of Ports and Harbors warn that costly dredging and strict draft limits are already driving up logistics costs, threatening the viability of key transport corridors.
• Oil and gas. Offshore rigs and pipelines were designed for specific depth and shoreline conditions. As those vanish, billions will be needed to retrofit infrastructure against exposure and damage.
• Biodiversity. Unique ecosystems-the shallow northern Caspian, sturgeon spawning grounds, migratory bird routes-are collapsing. Rising salinity is reshuffling species and wiping out food chains. WWF now counts the Caspian basin among the world's biodiversity “tipping points.”

The South Caucasus: Water Stress Becomes Security Stress

While the Caspian recedes, another crisis is unfolding across the South Caucasus, where water scarcity is no longer just a farming headache-it's morphing into a matter of national security.

The region depends heavily on transboundary rivers like the Kura and Araks, as well as on the freshwater stored in mountain glaciers. Both are under siege.

• Melting glaciers. Monitoring by the Russian Academy of Sciences and regional partners shows the Greater Caucasus has lost over 30 percent of its ice cover since the mid-20th century, with volume losses even sharper. The pace has accelerated over the last two decades. Global reports that about 7 percent of glaciers worldwide have disappeared in 20 years line up with the Caucasus trend-only here, the melt is happening even faster.

That meltwater isn't just ice vanishing. Glaciers act as natural reservoirs, smoothing river flows across the seasons. As they disappear, rivers will shift from stable summer feeding to wild spring floods followed by severe summer and autumn shortages-exactly when irrigation needs peak.

The Caucasus is learning the hard way: water is no longer just a resource. It's leverage, it's power, it's survival.

Demographic Pressure and Wasteful Use

Even with steady outmigration, the South Caucasus continues to urbanize, piling strain onto centralized water systems. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia all fall squarely into-or hover on the edge of-the category of countries with“chronic water scarcity.”

The biggest guzzler is agriculture, which swallows 70 to 75 percent of all available water. The problem? Antiquated, wasteful irrigation. Furrow and surface flooding still dominate, and efficiency rates rarely break 40 to 50 percent. That means most of the water pulled from rivers and reservoirs simply disappears, lost for good.

The Cross-Border Trap

Almost every major artery in the region is transboundary. That sets the stage for tension and conflict, especially as scarcity deepens. The Kura, Araks, and Samur rivers can only be managed through tough diplomacy and joint institutions. But those mechanisms are often weak, missing, or ignored.

Why Action Can't Wait: Two Numbers and One Principle

First, Azerbaijan's dependence on transboundary inflows is off the charts. Official estimates say 67 to 70 percent of its river water originates outside the country, mainly from the Kura and Araks basins. The Kura alone covers 80 percent of Azerbaijan's landmass and provides more than 70 percent of its drinking water. That's not just hydrology-it's existential fragility. The spigot is upstream, controlled by other jurisdictions. Add in droughts and reservoir operations beyond Azerbaijan's borders, and what happens in Georgia, Armenia, or Turkey shows up in taps in Baku. In dry years, surface water plunges from about 27 cubic kilometers to 20–21. And monitoring at the Kura and Araks borders has repeatedly logged pollutants-oil, phenols, copper-above national safety limits.

Second, the“summer battery” of the Greater Caucasus glaciers is draining fast. Between 2000 and 2020, glacier area shrank by 23.2 percent-roughly 321 square kilometers-at an average clip of −1.16 percent per year, with the eastern flank melting fastest. The loss is not abstract. Summer meltwater from firn and glacier ice once buffered river flows, flattening out dry-season lows. Without it, expect sharper spring floods followed by harsher shortages in July through September-exactly when water is most needed for drinking, energy, and irrigation.

And then there's the Caspian. Climate models converge on one conclusion: the drop is inevitable. Conservative scenarios put declines at 8–14 meters by century's end, with intermodel ranges from 2 to 21 meters. Worst-case CMIP6 runs push local plunges to 20–30 meters. Factor in human withdrawals across the basin, and some studies tack on another 7 meters. Recent history tells the same story: between 1996 and 2021, satellite altimetry tracked a 1.5-meter fall, accelerating after 2006. For the shallow northern shelf, that means exposed seabeds, decimated spawning grounds, and outdated nautical charts. For the broader ecosystem, it's a death blow to biodiversity, including nearly 90 percent of the world's sturgeon stock. And for economies, it spells endless cycles of dredging, port redesigns, pipeline rerouting, and rising accident risks across the oil services sector.

The bottom line: the goal isn't to“stop the inevitable,” but to manage it. As the UN Secretary-General put it,“Water is the lifeblood of humanity.” But lifeblood needs to be measured, priced, and shared.

What Needs to Happen Now

Measure Every Drop, From Source to Tap

• Switch from norms to real-time data: meters and gauges on pipelines, distribution nodes, farm outlets, and households; telemetry and SCADA across major canals and networks. National assessments flag the near-total absence of monitoring in agriculture-that has to change first.
• Stand up a basin-wide control center for the Kura–Araks, with a live dashboard tracking flows, temperatures, losses, and water quality at critical points.

Water Economics, Not Water Plans

• Tie tariffs and contracts to actual cubic meters, not hectares. Penalize excessive losses, reward modernization of farm and municipal networks.
• Redirect subsidies from“plowed acres” to“water saved.” Shaving just 1–2 percent off technical losses in municipal and irrigation systems frees millions of cubic meters of“new” water-without building a single new reservoir.

Engineering the Small Fixes

• Patch leaks, rebuild canal gates, add small retention structures and seasonal catchments in foothills. Modernize pump stations with variable-frequency drives, night schedules, and energy savings. Deploy drip and sprinkler systems on the most water-stressed fields.
• For Absheron, create a tech safety net: desalination as backup or peak capacity (not base load), diversify sourcing between the Kura–Araks, Samur, and groundwater-with strict monitoring of salinity and pollutants.

Deals and Data With Neighbors

• Draft binding drought-year protocols: pre-set triggers for cuts and clear priorities (drinking water, sanitation flows, irrigation). Guarantee data sharing on inflows, releases, hydropower operations, and dam maintenance.
• Build joint pollution maps for transboundary stretches of the Kura and Araks, with annual public reports and cleanup plans to reverse the trend of cross-border contamination.

The Caspian: Adapt Ahead of the Curve

• Redesign ports, waterfronts, and oil service hubs for −8/−14/−20 meter scenarios, with flexible depths, extended quays, movable intake points, modular pipeline inserts, and backup navigation charts.
• Protect sturgeon nurseries and migration routes with ecological buffers. Crack down on poaching and industrial overfishing as shallows retreat.

The Big Picture

Azerbaijan's water security risk is a three-part puzzle: external dependence on the Kura–Araks, the collapse of the snow-and-ice“battery,” and the long-term decline of the Caspian. Each piece is documented by hard measurements and models. Together, they demand a new playbook: measure everything, waste nothing, negotiate early, and build infrastructure for the worst year, not the average one.

A Technological Breakthrough in Water Use: From Drainage to Harvest

What delivers results right away?

• Drip and micro-irrigation. Efficiency in the field jumps to 90 percent with drip systems, compared to 50–60 percent with traditional surface flooding. Translation: less water lost to evaporation and seepage, more consistent plant nutrition, and higher yields per cubic meter.
• Sensors and precision irrigation. Smart automation keeps real-world efficiency of drip systems in the 70–95 percent range. The key isn't just hardware, it's management.
• Crop shifts and new practices. Swapping to less water-hungry crops, mulching, and minimal tillage cut water footprints without undercutting margins.
• The Morocco model. A subsidized push for drip irrigation and managed services lifted productivity and water efficiency for thousands of farmers. Scale turned drip into the norm for high-value crops.

One caveat: the efficiency paradox. If water use isn't capped, farmers who save water with drip often pivot to thirstier, more profitable crops. Total withdrawals can actually rise. That's why tech has to be paired with volume limits and price signals-otherwise“savings” in the field turn into overdraft in the basin.

Infrastructure: Fix the Leaks Before You Pour

The cheapest cubic meter is the one you don't lose. Globally, network losses average about 30 percent. Physical leaks waste tens of billions of cubic meters every year. Where countries have driven losses down to single digits, the payoff-in both water and money-lasts for decades.

Steps that work:

• Aggressive leak detection, DMA sections, valve and joint replacement, full instrumentation, and night pressure management-before any wholesale pipe replacement.
• Canal reconstruction: in some systems,“leakiness” runs 40–60 percent. Lining with concrete or PVC and shifting to closed networks cuts losses sharply.
• Reuse: Israel already returns more than 85 percent of treated wastewater to agriculture.
• Desalination: a safety net for coastal metros, especially with cheap renewable power.

Education and Awareness: Behavior Matters

“Soft” measures work. In California, cities cut water use by more than 25 percent between 2015 and 2016.

For the Caucasus, that means:

• Embedding water-saving and climate adaptation basics into school and university curricula.
• Making eco-standards mandatory in utilities and farming.
• Mass campaigns for households with simple, memorable“rules of the cubic meter.”

Monitoring and Forecasting: To Measure Is to Manage

What's needed: dense hydrological monitoring in the Kura–Araks basin, glacier tracking in the Caucasus, interoperable data formats, and satellite-backed services.

Why it matters:

• 2023 was the driest year for rivers in 33 years.
• Abnormally low flows have persisted for five years straight.
• Satellites now make it possible to measure groundwater deficits.

Tools: basin-wide models with 10/20/50-year horizons, public dashboards of inflows, and shipping scenarios tied to the Caspian's falling levels.

Cross-Border Management: From Politics to Engineering

The Kura–Araks doesn't care about borders, which means resilience only comes from the trio: data, deals, discipline. Azerbaijan is a signatory to the UN Water Convention. Armenia and Georgia aren't-yet. That's a vector for institutional convergence.

A practical package:

• A unified water balance with shared limits.
• Joint investment in canals, monitoring, reuse, and“dry ports.”
• Coordination among the five Caspian states on navigation depths and dredging.

What the Economy Gets Out of It

• Agriculture. Converting 25–30 percent of irrigated land to drip and closed systems delivers double-digit water savings and higher per-hectare revenue. But gains only stick if capped with limits.
• Cities. Cutting losses by even 10 percentage points creates a “virtual reservoir” without building a single dam.
• Industry and ports. Long-term Caspian level scenarios for 2050 and 2100 must underpin investment in shipping lanes, berths, dredging, and logistics.

The regional water crisis may be“silent,” but it's already rewriting the economic map. The answer is simple in formula, tough in execution: technology + infrastructure + behavior + measurement + agreements. Action has to fire on all five cylinders at once, with hard KPIs: liters per harvest, percentage losses, reuse share, forecast accuracy, compliance with limits. Only then can the “inevitable” shift from chaos to managed risk.

Baku Network

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