Climate Change and the Stability of Water Allocation Agreements
Date
01.01.2007
01.01.2007
Authors
Erik Ansink, Arjan Ruijs
JEL Code
C7,Q25
C7,Q25
Keywords:
Water Allocation,Stability,Climate Change,Game Theory
Water Allocation,Stability,Climate Change,Game Theory
Publisher
Climate Change and Sustainable Development
Climate Change and Sustainable Development
Editor
Carlo Carraro
Carlo Carraro
We analyse agreements on river water allocation between riparian countries. Besides being efficient, water allocation agreements need to be stable in order to be effective in increasing the efficiency of water use. In this paper, we assess the stability of water allocation agreements, using a game theoretic model. We consider the effects of climate change and the choice of a sharing rule on stability. Our results show that both a decrease in mean river flow and an increase in the variance of river flow decrease the stability of an agreement. An agreement where the downstream country is allocated a fixed amount of water has the lowest stability compared to other sharing rules.