The water level of the Caspian Sea has now fallen to the lowest level at any time in the last 400 years, inflicting serious ecological, economic and even political consequences on the littoral states, according to Sergey Zhiltsov of the Diplomatic Academy and Andrey Kostyanoy of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The decline which is now taking place between nine and 35 centimeters a year has hit the northern portions of the sea and thus affected the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan especially hard, but it is now so large that it is affecting the southern littoral countries of Azerbaijan, Iran........

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