Unpacking the Environmental Requirements of the Caspian Legal Convention: Prospects for the Trans-Caspian Pipeline

Abstract

This article explains the Convention of the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which was signed in August 2018. More specifically, it focuses on the environmental articles of the legal agreement. In doing so, it argues that the existing scholarship overestimates the influence of the environmental requirements (Articles 1, 11, 14, and 15) on the construction perspective of the Trans-Caspian Pipeline. While it has been constantly claimed that Russia and Iran could use ecological requirements to oppose the pipeline in the future, this is not the case at the present. Rather, the Caspian littoral states have been cooperating with environmental protocols and regulations under the Tehran Convention since 2003; therefore, the recent ecological requirements of the legal agreement are not new. This article serves as a response to the relevant debate on ecological issues and infrastructure cooperation across the Caspian Sea.