Publication Categories

Since 1990s, Kazakhstan has always been in the forefront of activities related to nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security in Central Asia as the region faced many common problems inherited from the Soviet-era military programs, as well as new threats, such as illicit trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials. Having disposed […]

Nowadays, Kazakhstan is among the world’s fastest-growing primary energy source producers and exporters. The energy industry of Kazakhstan includes oil, gas and coal production, and electricity generation. Being at the heart of Kazakhstan’s energy industry, the  oil and gas sector traditionally generates a large percentage of the country’s GDP. For instance, […]

Being an oil export based economy, which focuses on the development of oil and gas bearing areas originating in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, Iran pays less attention to the Caspian region, where there is still much work to be done to develop sustainable exploration and production […]

In 1996, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan held the first meeting dedicated to resolving the issues of the Caspian Sea legal regime with special attention paid to harmonizing positions and developing common approaches towards drafting the Convention on the Caspian Legal Status. Over the past […]

This research project is a combination of a comprehensive desk study and a field research on the environment and energy nexus in Central Asia. This final report seeks to produce rec- ommendations based on experiences and needs of the people of the region, supported by a fieldwork and in cooperation […]

For over two months, a radioactive incident of unknown origin has been making the headlines in the European and Russian media. On October 8, 2017, Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection and Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety issued a joint statement reporting that since […]

The Kashagan oilfield is located in the nature reserve area of the northern part of the Caspian Sea. The waters here are shallow with depth of two to ten meters. Moreover, the area has an extreme weather conditions with hot summers and cold winters. Due to the shallowness of waters […]

In the Soviet period, Kazakhstan’s uranium industry played an important role as an integral part of the USSR’s nuclear military-industrial complex. When the Soviet Union collapsed, in addition to the nuclear-weapon systems and facilities, the newly independent state inherited a developed civilian uranium mining and processing infrastructure (Nuclear Threat Initiative, […]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent states of Central Asia have confronted a number of unresolved issues related to the Soviet legacy of Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) development programs. One of the most serious problems that has public health, environmental and security risk dimensions is […]

On March 7, 2017, the Prime Ministers of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) member states held a meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council in Bishkek in order to discuss prospects to strengthen mutual trade and ways to remove barriers for the development of the internal market of the EEU. However, […]