WATER POLITICS

From Aktau’s seaside promenade, a stretch of gorse flecked with ice separates the city from the waves. The sea, already more than 30 meters from the embankment, is still receding.

“You can’t fail to notice it,” said Adilbek Kozybakov, a local ecologist and founder of the “Caspian — My Sea!” public initiative. “There are some places where the sea has retreated even further.”

More than a mere blight on the landscape, the shrinking body of water presents a mounting problem for Kazakhstan’s economy, threatening ports, oil fields and a trade corridor meant to link China and Europe.

“Over the last several years, there have been annual declines of up to 30 centimeters,” said Simon Goodman, lecturer in evolutionary biology at the University of Leeds. He told Nikkei Asia that while there are several reasons for lower water levels, climate change is an increasingly crucial factor.

With global warming on track to exceed 2 C, Goodman says there is “a very high likelihood” that the sea level could decline more than 10 meters from the 2010 baseline.

That would be catastrophic for western Kazakhstan.

“The northern Caspian basin has average depths of around 5 to 8 meters,” said Goodman. “With a 10-meter decline, that would all disappear. That’s about a third of the total area of the Caspian Sea.”

Goodman coauthored a paper in 2025 warning that continued decline would devastate ecosystems and critical infrastructure. While some measures, such as reducing water offtake from the Volga and Ural rivers could slow losses, he said, it “probably won’t halt” climate-driven shrinkage. Governments must now begin preparing for it.

“This has now become a very high priority for all of the Caspian countries,” he added. “They fully realize the potential economic and social consequences of this.”

Nowhere are those consequences clearer than at Aktau’s port, a linchpin of the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor — a multimodal transport route that seeks to connect China and Europe.

Trains laden with containers arrive here after a three-day journey across Kazakhstan from the Chinese border. Cranes work tirelessly stacking them onto waiting ships. From here, cargo crosses the Caspian to Azerbaijan before moving on to Turkey and Europe.

But the falling waterline is complicating that vision.

In 2025 alone, the Caspian Sea level fell 14 centimeters, according to Talgat Nagumanov, a specialist in the port’s logistics department. He cites the “negative impact” that this decline has had on operations, as shallower waters mean vessel loads must be lighter, which in turn leads to higher costs.

“The decline in vessel loads undoubtedly impacts the profitability of maritime transport and creates the risk of cargo flows being redirected to alternative routes,” Nagumanov said.

The port’s executive director of commercial operations, Arman Zhakupov, told Nikkei that given the difficulty of forecasting the Caspian’s future, “the only solution at present is phased dredging.”

Environmentalists warn that repeated dredging — the excavation of sand and sediment from the seabed — can decimate habitats and release pollutants. But it ensures that larger vessels can continue to dock at the port’s shallow harbor. Large vessels are generally more stable, meaning they can operate more easily in the Caspian’s notorious winter winds.

Zhakupov noted that on a normal day, “a boat can be fully loaded and unloaded within 50 hours.” However, this winter, winds have been so strong that the port has had to cease operations on five out of 10 days in February.

This creates the kind of bottlenecks that cause logistics companies to seek alternative routes. But given western companies’ reluctance to use northern transport routes via Russia, reducing delays on Caspian crossings is seen as essential.

Kazakhstan and its partners are investing accordingly. A joint financial package of up to 45 million euros ($53.5 million) from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Union announced in September will expand Aktau’s cargo capacity. The port aims to handle up to 240,000 containers annually by 2028, up from planned volumes of 93,000 this year.

Further north, energy infrastructure is also exposed. Since 2022, the European Union has leaned heavily on Kazakh crude, with Kazakhstan delivering 12.2% of the bloc’s oil in the third quarter of 2025, its third-largest supplier.

A significant proportion of that oil — 450,000 barrels per day — comes from Kashagan, one of the world’s most expensive energy projects. Located 80 kilometers offshore in the shallow northern Caspian, it depends on barges navigating channels that must be kept at a minimum depth of 2.9 meters.

“Vast sums of money are being invested into trying to keep the oil fields operational by dredging these channels,” Goodman said.

The consortium managing Kashagan, the North Caspian Operating Co., plans to dredge more than 1 million cubic meters of sediment in 2026, adding to earlier efforts in 2021-2022.

As the waterline retreats from Aktau, the trade routes and oil channels carved into the seabed grow longer and more expensive to maintain. For now, dredgers and engineers are buying time.

Back on Aktau’s shoreline, environmental advocates like Kozybakov question the long-term logic of prioritizing hydrocarbons.

“Oil production is at most for [another] 50 years,” he said. “After that, the resource will be exhausted. From the point of view of long-term economic prospects, preserving the protected zone in its pristine form is more important.”