Sharing the costs of cleaning a river: the Upstream Responsibility rule

The cleaning up of waste present in transboundary rivers, which requires the cooperation of di erent authorities, is a problematic issue, especially when responsibility for the discharge of the waste is not well-defined. Following Ni and Wang [12] we assume that a river is a segment divided into several regions from upstream to downstream. We show that when the transfer rate of the waste is unknown, the clean-up cost vector provides useful information for estimating some limits in regard to the responsibility of each region. We propose a cost allocation rule, the Upstream Responsibility rule, which takes into account these limits in distributing costs \fairly" and we provide an axiomatic characterization of this rule via certain properties based on basic ideas concerning the responsibility of regions

Papua New Guinea - Sanitation, Water Supply and Hygiene In Urban Informal Settlements

This paper is the result of the research conducted by the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank and key stakeholders in informal settlements in the capital Port Moresby and a representative provincial town, Wewak, to understand the conditions, aspirations, barriers, and opportunities to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene for informal settlers

Complaint, compromise and solution concepts for cooperative games

This thesis mainly focuses on solution concepts for cooperative games. We investigate the solution concepts concerning the complaints of players. Motivated by the work the procedural values, we study the formation of the grand coalition and define a new kind of complaint for individual players. We then reveal that the solutions for both models coincide with the ENSC value either based on the lexicographic criterion or the least square criterion. We propose the so called alpha-ENSC value by considering the egoism of players. We implement the alpha-ENSC value by means of optimization and also the satisfier of a set of properties. Following the similar idea, we propose two kinds of complaints for coalitions and define the optimal compromise values based on the lexicographic criterion. It turns out that the optimal compromise values coincides with the ENSC value and the CIS value under corresponding complaint. We show an application of the previous mentioned method. We introduce and axiomatize a class of cost sharing methods for polluted river sharing systems that consists of the convex combinations of the known Local Responsibility Sharing (LR) method and the Upstream Equal Sharing (UES) method. We also deals with the solution concepts based on the compromise between the ideal and minimal payoffs for players, which is inspired by the definition of the tau value but in a more general way. We reveal the relations between the general compromise value with several well known solution concepts. Furthermore, we investigate the solution concepts for cooperative games with stochastic payoffs. We focus on a subset of all allocations and introduce the stochastic complaint for players. Under the least square criterion, the most stable solutions and the fairest solutions are proposed. Moreover, the optimal solution stays the same whether the optimization model depends on the coalitions or individual players

The river sharing problem: A review of the technical literature for policy economists

Water is essential for life. However, the basic problem of water resource allocation has been that water tends to be over-allocated. Demand for water exceeds the available supply. Essentially, the water economy is bankrupt. Bankruptcy problems have been almost exhaustively studied in the literature on economic theory-primarily from the perspective of cooperative game theory. The main concern of this literature has been how to fairly divide up the assets of a bankrupt entity. In water resource economics cooperative game theory has often been employed as a means of analyzing water resource allocation. It was only recently that the problem of directional flow was incorporated into such analyses. This has come to be known as the “river sharing problem” in the theoretical literature. Accounting for the direction of flow in water resource allocation problems has profound implications for policies that wish to facilitate both fair and efficient water allocations. This is the case whether proposed policies are interventionist or market based in nature. There is now a considerable literature on the allocation and distribution of water resources characterized by unidirectional flow. In this paper I critically review and appraise this literature with a view to making it more accessible to applied and policy economists. A key feature of the paper is that the connection between the bankruptcy literature, which has recently also realized the importance of flow, and the river sharing literature is discussed. The current state of the art in game theoretic models of water resource allocation with directional flow is discussed and implications and consequences for water resource policy highlightedRiver sharing problem, Bankruptcy, Cooperative game theory, Water resouyrce allocation, distributive justice

Allocating the costs of cleaning a river: expected responsibility versus median responsibility

We consider the problem of cleaning a transboundary river, proposed by Ni and Wang (Games Econ Behav 60:176–186, 2007). A river is modeled as a segment divided into subsegments, each occupied by one region, from upstream to downstream. The waste is transferred from one region to the next at some rate. Since this transfer rate may be unknown, the social planner could have uncertainty over each region’s responsibility. Two natural candidates to distribute the costs in this setting would be the method that assigns to each region its expected responsibility and the one that assigns to each region its median responsibility. We show that the latter is equivalent to the Upstream Responsibility method (Alcalde-Unzu et al. in Games Econ Behav 90:134–150, 2015) and the former is a new method that we call Expected Responsibility. We compare both solutions and analyze them in terms of a new property of monotonicity.Jorge Alcalde-Unzu acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Government through projects PGC2018-093542-B-I00 and ECO2017-91589-EXP. María Gómez-Rúa acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Government through projects ECO2014-52616-R and ECO2017-82241-R and the Galician Government through projects GRC 2015/014 and ED431B 2019/34. Elena Molis acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Government through projects ECO2015-67519-P and PID2019-110783GB-I00, the Basque Government through project IT-568-13 and the Andalusian Government through the projects SEJ1436 and SEJ492

Water Neutral: Reducing and Offsetting the Impacts of Water Footprints

During the past few years the water footprint has started to receive recognition as a useful indicator of water use, within both governments (UNESCO, 2006) and non-governmental organizations (Zygmunt, 2007; WWF, 2008), as well as within businesses (WBCSD, 2006; JPMorgan, 2008) and media (The Independent, 2008; The Economist, 2008; Discover Magazine, 2008). The increased interest in the water-footprint concept has prompted the question about what consumers and businesses can do to reduce their water footprint. Several instruments have been proposed, including a water label for water-intensive products, an international water-pricing protocol, an international business agreement on water-footprint accounting, and a Kyoto-protocol-like agreement on tradable water-footprint permits (Hoekstra, 2006; Verkerk et al., 2008). Another concept that has been proposed is that of 'water neutrality'. The idea behind the concept is to see whether humans can somehow neutralise or offset their 'water footprint'. The question is very general and interesting from the point of view of both individual consumers and larger communities, but also from the perspective of governments and companies. The aim of this report is to critically discuss the water-neutral concept. It first discusses the water-footprint concept, because water neutrality is all about reducing and offsetting the impacts of water footprints (Figure 1.1). Subsequently, the report elaborates the idea of water neutrality. After a generic discussion of the concept, it is discussed what water neutrality means for a product, an individual consumer or a business. Finally, the concept is critically analysed in terms of its strengths and weaknesses