International Governance of the Caspian Sea Legal Regime

This book analyses and evaluates the political, legal, negotiating and scientific parameters, which determined and/or influenced the course of international governance and the formation of the new conventional regime of the Caspian Sea (2018). Five littoral states managed to overcome complete disagreement and achieve the establishment of peaceful relations for successful international cooperation through multilateral negotiations in multidimensional geopolitical conditions (period 1991-2018) in the context of the redistribution of natural wealth, mainly energy resources, of particular geoeconomic and geostrategic importance. The book offers a different, interdisciplinary perspective on a widely discussed topic. A new scientific geographical term, “residual sea,” is proposed especially for the Caspian, which underlines the natural character of this body of water without the legal implications of a “sea”. For the first time, a systematic analysis of the entire negotiation process for the legal regime of the Caspian Sea has been conducted, with the compilation of the Chronodiagram, where meetings at all levels have been recorded, and the phases and stages of the development of the Negotiation Process have been identified, systematised and mapped. After an informative introduction to the geoscientific and geopolitical aspects of the situation in the region in plain language, the history of the negotiations unfolds as a logical sequence of reasoned actions by the littoral states. The whole process of negotiations on the legal regime of the Caspian Sea is a rare example of successful peaceful cooperation among the“hard players” with an even more “hard” subject of negotiations – the distribution of energy wealth and an extremely effective international governance with a subtle “oriental” nuance of one of the most complex issues of International Law of the Sea. What are the ingredients of a «successful recipe» that may be applied elsewhere?  

Author Biography

Marina Soilemezidou is a Research Fellow of MEPIELAN Centre. She holds a PhD in International Relations and Environment from the Department of International, European and Area Studies, Panteion University of Athens. Her thesis, conducted under the supervision of the Director of MEPIELAN, Professor Evangelos Raftopoulos, was entitled “International Governance of the Caspian Sea Legal Status: Political, Legal, Negotiating and Scientific Aspects”. In 2000, she received a Master’s degree in interdisciplinary ‘Oceanography and Marine Environment Management’ from the Geology and Geoenvironment Department of the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens. She prepared her postgraduate thesis at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. She obtained a Bachelor in ‘Geography Department’ from Kirov State University of Kazakhstan. In the framework of her thesis, she took part in the governmental research project ‘Planning of partial transfer of Siberian river waterflow to Kazakhstan and Central Asia’. She worked as a soil scientist-engineer at the Department of Research and Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Institute of Agricultural Aerophotogeodetic Surveys, USSR. She served as Oceanographer and GIS Scientist at the General Secretary of Civil Protection of the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Athens. She has also worked as a stagiaire and employee in the Permanent Representation of Greece to the European Union in Brussels (COREPER 1). She currently works at the Academy of Athens.