Environmental problems and solutions in the Caspian and Aral Basins

Managing environmental problems at the national level is relatively easy: ideally governments make users pay the social costs of the use of the resource by some means or other. Measures can include economic instruments, such as charges, or direct controls, such as limited access to the resource (Markandya et al. 2002). But even if governments cannot make users pay, they have recourse to other command and control policies that regulate the use of resources. In the case of international resources, like the Caspian Sea or the Aral Basin waters, the problem is more difficult. There is no authority that can impose a solution.1 Hence a solution has to be agreed.