The paper addresses the significance of the total environmental load control scheme which was recently introduced by the Japanese gov-ernment, and points out the need for the development of scientific tools in determining how to assign the total loads to the dischargers located along a closed water system. In light of this consideration, a conflict analysis is performed to study the problem systematically, whereby a full use is made of cooperative game theory to model it. The model corresponds to the four stages of planning: total load standard setting, facility planning, cost allocation, and taxation and subsidy scheme.
Given some fundamental examples representing real world issues, a systematic assessment is made of both the theoretical and practical implications to be derived from the model. A point is made that under the particular situations some type of equity criteria, if added, may effectively reduce the possibilities of determining the environmental load assignments to the dischargers.
