Gaming the System in the Caspian Sea: Can game theory solve a decades-old dispute?

Alexandria, VA — A persistent stalemate over ownership and resource allocation, of everything from beluga caviar to energy resources, has hung over the Caspian Sea ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union. That stalemate has put the countries surrounding the sea — Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan — at odds. The conflict is a unique multinational mash-up of economic, political, energy resource and environmental concerns that has attracted attention of researchers outside the usual crowd of policy analysts and political scientists.**

Looking to help advance the discussion over the Caspian toward as efficient and equitable an outcome as possible, scientists are taking a stab at the decades-old dispute by applying game theory and related methods, which use mathematics to study competition and cooperation. These methods have predominantly been used by economists and sociologists. In the November issue, EARTH Magazine explores how these methods are being used to parse possible outcomes of the Caspian Sea negotiations, and how what was once a water-rights dispute became a competition for vast underwater natural resources.**

Read more about “crime scene investigation” of the La Brea Tarpits, plastic ocean ecosystems and read about how life balances itself on Earth according to the Gaia Earth Hypothesis.**

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