Saving the Mekong River Basin

Harold Houba, Kim Hang Pham Do and Xueqin Zhu

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The Mekong River (MR) is shared by six countries: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Over the years there have been both conflict and cooperation on managing the water resources to meet population growth, climate change and the desire for economic development. Currently, the MR Committee (MRC) has weak policy instruments. This paper exploits an axiomatic bargaining approach to examine how China and the MRC might negotiate effective joint management. We investigate what welfare improvements arise from strengthening the MRC and propose an alternative offering for the MR's joint management that is preferable to the status quo from the perspective of all nations. We show that there are little gains from cooperation unless international institutions provide a budget to promote cooperation with China. Alternatively, strengthening the MR Committee has the potential to achieve large welfare improvements.

Keywords: transboundary river basin; Mekong River; optimization; Nash bargaining solution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 C78 Q34 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:37407

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