Caspian Counterpoint - Retuning Static Priorities

Daria A Moussavi, MArch (Year: 5)

Neither sea, nor lake, human juridical systems find the Caspian elusive. The Caspian is at once a source of life and a site of destructive practices, caught between contradicting voices and agendas that evade accountability for them while attempting to subject it to their jurisdiction using legal semantics. The undefined legal status of the Caspian allows for and requires a new strategy for its protection. The current governance of the Caspian revolves around political and economic agendas of its 5 littoral countries and their respective allies/foreign entities with historical stakes in the region. Existing initiatives fragment the Caspian, which can’t speak for or represent itself, leaving critical environmental concerns as an afterthought. The project brings these conversations together, in an attempt to shift their priorities and give its ecology, including human and non-human life-forms depending on it, a chance to recover. The Caspian’s undefined status, untied to existing legal frameworks, is used to grant it jurisdiction over itself, its constitutional elements represented through its soundscape. The new spaces for negotiation are along the many interconnected flows of the Caspian, and the new tool for negotiation is sound. A proposal to join voices, in order for the neglected to be heard.