Summit in Aktau aims in guaranteeing the sustainable development of the Caspian region

On August 12, the Caspian countries celebrate the Caspian Day. This date unites the citizens of five countries, bounded with environmental and economic activities, freight and passenger transportation. The holiday is timed to the commencement of the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea (2006), developed with the assistance of the United Nations Environment Programme, adopted by Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in Tehran in 2003. This was the first official document regulating the transfer of activities at sea from the "voluntary execution" regime to the legal framework, due to which the Caspian regional cooperation reached a qualitatively new level. The purpose of the convention is the conservation, restoration and rational use of marine biological resources. 

This year on August 12, Aktau will host the 5th Summit of heads of the Caspian states. It is expected that during the meeting the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea will be signed. 

The summit participants will continue working on multilateral documents on the ecological and economic problems of the Caspian Sea. 

Our country took an active part in a number of high-level meetings, contributing to the development and promotion of five-sided agreements on environmental protection, navigation, fisheries, rational use of the Caspian's bioresources, etc. At the 3rd Summit in Baku in November 2010, the President of Turkmenistan put forward an initiative to develop an Agreement on Cooperation in the Sphere of Emergency Prevention and Elimination of Their Consequences, as well as the Agreement on the Conservation and Rational Use of Biological Resources. 

At the 4th Summit, held in Astrakhan in September 2014, the Turkmen leader put forward a proposal to draft the Agreement on the trade and economic cooperation between the Caspian states and the creation of a permanent Caspian Economic Forum. The President of Turkmenistan also initiated the work on the Agreement on cooperation in the field of transport and the proposal to establish a Caspian regional transport and logistics center. During 2016-2017, Ashgabat held several working meetings to agree on the drafts of these documents. 

Astrakhan Summit was marked by the adoption of a number of significant documents - on cooperation in the field of prevention of emergencies and elimination of their consequences, on the conservation and rational use of biological resources, and in the field of hydrometeorology. All five-party agreements were signed and ratified by the Turkmen side.