On the fair abatement of riparian pollution

2026-03-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of allocating pollution abatement quotas in river basins, where upstream emissions inflict disproportionately greater damage downstream. To reconcile fairness and environmental efficiency beyond simple proportional allocation, the paper proposes a novel class of geometric allocation rules. Serving as an alternative to the scheme by Yang et al. (2025), the proposed method is rigorously characterized through axiomatic analysis and empirically evaluated using a case study of the Tuojiang River basin. The findings demonstrate that the new rules not only extend the application of resource allocation theory to river pollution claims but also exhibit superior performance in accommodating geographical heterogeneity and ensuring equitable emission reduction responsibilities, thereby confirming their theoretical soundness and practical feasibility.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Fair Division
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

We study the design of fair allocation rules for the abatement of riparian pollution. To do so, we consider the so-called river pollution claims model, recently introduced by Yang et al. (2025) to distribute a budget of emissions permits among agents (cities, provinces, or countries) located along a river. In such a model, each agent has a claim reflecting population, emission history, and business-as-usual emissions, and the issue is to allocate among them a budget that is lower (or equal) than the aggregate claim. For environmental reasons, the specific location along the river where pollutants are emitted is an important concern (the more upstream the location is the higher the damage of polluting the river). We characterize a class of geometric rules that adjust proportional allocations to compromise between fairness and environmental concerns. Our class is an alternative to the one proposed by Yang et al. (2025). We compare both alternatives through an axiomatic study, as well as an illustration for the case study of the Tuojiang Basin in China.

Problem

• riparian pollution
• fair allocation
• emissions permits
• river pollution claims model
• abatement

Innovation

• geometric rules
• riparian pollution
• fair allocation
• emissions permits
• axiomatic analysis