First Caspian Environmental Summit in Avaza: a five-party commission will tackle the falling sea level, first meeting in Azerbaijan

On 9 October the first Caspian Environmental Summit was held in Turkmenistan's Avaza National Tourist Zone. It was chaired by Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov and attended by President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran. The summit was Turkmenistan's initiative, first put forward at the UN General Assembly in September 2025.

The leaders adopted a Decision on the summit's outcome. Its centrepiece is a five-party Commission on the falling level of the Caspian. It will bring together deputy heads of government of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and senior representatives of Iran and Russia, study the causes of the decline, draw up joint measures and set up expert working groups. Governments will name their representatives within three months, and the first meeting will be held in Azerbaijan in the first half of 2027.

President Ilham Aliyev said the decline has accelerated in recent years: the sea's surface has shrunk by more than 20,000 square kilometres, and some 30,000 hectares of dry land have emerged in Azerbaijan's sector alone. Climate change is not the only cause, he said; reduced river inflow and human activity also play a major role. Recalling that he had proposed joint expert groups at the 2022 Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, he called for moving from general discussion to a permanent mechanism for cooperation and monitoring, and for an objective scientific assessment of where the decline is heading.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the Caspian our grandchildren will see depends on the decisions we take today. He drew special attention to the Caspian seal, whose numbers have fallen from about a million to around 270,000 over a century, and said Kazakhstan is ready to use its nature reserve to protect them. Tokayev proposed joint research based on the Caspian Sea Research Institute set up in Kazakhstan in 2024; a shared digital platform using satellites and artificial intelligence to track water, shoreline, biodiversity, pollution and river-flow data; completing the permanent secretariat of the Tehran Convention; and joint operations against poaching.

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov stressed that improving the Caspian's ecological condition is a priority of Turkmenistan's domestic and foreign policy and said his country is ready to work with partners across the whole environmental agenda. Turkmenistan presented its Caspian Environmental Initiative at the UN back in 2023.