Azerbaijan’s Social Inequality and Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards

Abstract

Relating social inequality and vulnerability to environmental hazards is an especially challenging task in regions with a paucity of data. Researchers attempting to measure the potential environmental and human impacts of past and continuing industrial toxicity in Azerbaijan have often either questioned the reliability of environmental indicators disclosed by the state’s official statistics or found the government’s environmental and population data partial and incomplete. To contribute to a clearer description of the human impacts of toxic waste locations and to assist other researchers, we use a novel methodology. By overlaying data from Azerbaijan’s Toxic Site Identification Program (TSIP) onto national census population data – augmented with in-country interviews – we can map the inequitable distribution of infant mortality, unemployment, and toxic waste sites to better suggest some of the places and people in particular need of environmental mitigation and health, and economic intervention. This method is transferable to future research in the Caucasus, Eurasia, and other data- poor areas.