The Mekong Game: Achieving an All-win Situation

In recent years, there have been many quarrels among countries of the Mekong River Basin surrounding use of the water resources of that river. In particular, China’s behavior of constructing dams upstream has resulted in objections by many people in all countries downstream. Cooperative game theory has been applied to solving issues of building and utilizing dams on trans-border rivers. The central question is how to allocate the surplus benefits generated by the dams. This paper proposes to achieve an all-win situation in use of Mekong water resources through cooperation. A game named “The Mekong Game” was designed for those Ph.D. students and resource persons to play on the PROSPER.NET’s workshop in 2010. For a hypothetical case in Mekong Game, the Shapley Value Method’s results were given, which could be regarded as one of equitable results in theory, and the Mekong Game’s process and outcomes are introduced in this paper. Participants were divided into six groups representing the six involved “countries.” The process of meeting an agreement with an all-win idea was simulated through three round-table negotiations. For the hypothetical case, different set of results under different situations were compared and discussed, including no dam(s), dam(s) without cooperation, dam(s) with cooperation but without compensation and re-allocation, Shapley Value Method, and Mekong Game (bargaining and negotiation). The results reveal: although it is hard to get theoretical optimal aftermath considering other complicated factors than those can be calculated, the all-win situation is still possible through bargaining and negotiation processes, which should be much better than all-lose situation such as the current one.