The refined allocation of water resources and pollutant loads in a basin according to seasonal changes is an important measure for sustainable management. This study proposes a monthly water resource and pollutant load allocation model that is based on the water footprint and fallback bargaining. First, the water utilization and pollutant discharge demand and allocable resources are accounted for by taking their water footprints as indicators. Subsequently, various initial allocation schemes are designed based on several typical bankruptcy rules. Finally, with the goal of resource sustainability, the initial schemes are optimized by applying the fallback bargaining approach. The Huangshui River basin, which is located in Qinghai, China, is a typical seasonal basin with water use conflicts and it is considered for verifying the proposed methodology. The results show that the monthly allocation framework can effectively balance the water use and pollutant discharge demand of regions upstream and downstream in different seasons, improve the overall resource utilization efficiency in the basin, and ensure that the allocation each month reaches the Pareto optimum.Sustainability 2019, 11, 6836 2 of 23 in basins and satisfy each stakeholder as much as possible. Beginning with reservoir optimization scheduling studies in the 1940s, the early allocations of water resources and pollutant loads in basins were based on the assumption of collective rationality following the principles of security, fairness, and efficiency, and various hydrological models (e.g., [7]) and multiobjective optimization models (e.g., [8]) were established for allocating water resources and pollutant loads among different regions and sectors within basins, which are known as the 'top-down' type. With sufficient water resources and environmental capacities, stakeholders can recognize and implement these optimized allocation schemes. However, as the scale of population and economy in a basin continue to expand, water use and pollutant discharge conflicts among different agents (regions and sectors) also escalate. The traditional 'top-down' optimization allocation cannot meet the upstream and downstream requirements, and the implementation of the allocation plan has no guarantee [9].The application of game theory, bankruptcy theory, social choice theory, and fallback bargaining for the allocation of water resources and pollutant loads in basins make allocations from the perspective of interaction and negotiation, which ensures that the preferences of various stakeholders are met and the allocation plans are implemented [10,11]. The models that are based on game theory focus on the equilibrium characteristic of decision-making when the activities of stakeholders interact [12], such as the graph model for water resource conflict resolution developed by [13], the cooperative and noncooperative allocation model that was designed by [14], and the weighing factors model for equitable and reasonable allocation that was proposed by [15]. Bankruptcy theory is a...
