Title

Game Theory Insights For The Caspian Sea Conflict

Keywords

Caspian Sea; Iran; Russia (after 1991); Water resources

Abstract

Caspian Sea - the largest enclosed body of water on earth - is the subject of one of the world's most intractable disputes, involving five coastal states of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The conflict over the legal status of this multinational water body emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then the parties have been negotiating without reaching an agreement on the ownerships of waters, and the oil and natural gas beneath them. As long as there is no new agreement on how to share the Caspian Sea among the five states, the two old Iran-USSR treaties may continue to govern the Caspian Sea. Based on these treaties, each state's territorial waters extends only ten miles from the shoreline, free navigation is guaranteed to both parties, and the states are granted exclusive fishing rights within their territorial waters. In this study, various cooperative game theory solution methods are applied to examine the possibility of resolution of the conflict and enforcing cooperation among the parties, and to find the share of each party in case of cooperation. Results suggest that equal sharing of Caspian Sea's resources is an efficient and fair method for resolving the conflict. This solution method complies with enforcing the Condominium regime for governing the Caspian Sea, which is in interest of Iran and Russia. © 2011 ASCE.

Publication Date

7-21-2011

Publication Title

World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2011: Bearing Knowledge for Sustainability - Proceedings of the 2011 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress

Number of Pages

2815-2819

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1061/41173(414)293

Socpus ID

79960413768 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/79960413768

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