Assessment of Game and Bankruptcy Theories to Supply Environmental Water of Hawizeh Wetland

In the recent decade, the occurrence of regional dust storm which is partly originated from drying Mesopotamia Wetlands (especially Hawizeh Wetland) had significantly increased in west of Iran and caused a lot of problems in impacted areas. Dust storm is a cross-border phenomenon so an international solution is required to assess and control it. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of cooperative (partial bankruptcy) and non-cooperative (Nash method) game theory in allocating Hawizeh Wetland environmental water right in different water allocation scenarios for Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The results indicated that the best option to encourage Turkey to release more water from the Tigris to provide environmental water rights of Hawizeh Wetland is Iran-Iraq coalition to reach an integrated political and economic agreement with Turkey. By comparing cooperative and non-cooperative methods, it was revealed that the non-cooperative method allocates larger shares of water to Iran compared to cooperative method. The proposed method of this paper can be used to evaluate supply of environmental water rights for trans-boundary waters.