Kaveh Madani

Known as "Iran’s expat eco-warrior", he was considered as the "Symbol of Expatriate Return" to Iran during President Rouhani's administration. He was interrogated many times during his tenure in Iran and was arrested in February 2018. In April 2018, he resigned from his political post and revealed that he was kept under surveillance by the Iranian intelligence services and hardliners since his return to Iran.

In recent years, he has played a major role in raising public awareness about water and environmental problems in Iran. This led to his nomination for executive and political positions with a strong support from Iranian environmental NGOs and activists. Madani was 36 when he took office, making him the youngest member of President Rouhani’s administration at his level.

By running a national campaign on waste, Madani was influential in raising public awareness about waste and plastic pollution in Iran. He was the initiator of the popular Bi-Zobaleh (No Waste) challenge, a social game that reminded both citizens and decision makers about their responsibilities on waste using the “Let’s Start with Ourselves” slogan.

"A key recommendation he has made is to model conflictive water-allocation situations using a game-theory approach, in which stakeholders strategize to maximize their utilities. This approach has been supported by both modeling and empirical data, and it has introduced novel insight on how to achieve binding, long-term solutions to complex water resources problems. Madani’s approach has been applied in a California community, revealing the importance of state-sponsored enforcement to achieve long-term sustainable agreements."

He received the Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award in 2019 from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) for "fundamental contributions to integrating game theory and decision analysis methods into conventional water resources systems models."

Kaveh Madani (Persian: کاوه مدنی ‎) is a scientist, activist, and former Iranian politician. He previously served as the Deputy Head of Iran's Department of Environment (also Iran's Deputy Vice President). He also served as the Vice President of the United Nations Environmental Assembly Bureau from 2017 to 2018.

He served as the Secretary of Iran's First International Conference on Climate Change in February 2017.

In 2017, his name appeared in the media, including Shargh, as one of the candidates with strong support from the Iranian environmental NGOs and activists to become Iran's Minister of Energy after Hamid Chitchian in Hassan Rouhani's second presidency term. Madani denied this news later in an interview with the Mehr News Agency.

He was appointed by Issa Kalantari as the Deputy for International Affairs, Innovation and Socio-cultural Engagement of Iran's Department of Environment in 2017. Madani had to quit his job in 2018 under the pressure by the Iranian hardliners.

From 2017 to 2018, he served as the Deputy Vice President of Iran in his position as the Deputy Head of Iran's Department of Environment and the Chief of Iran's Department of Environment's International Affairs and Conventions Center.

He served as the Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau from 2017 to 2018.

In 2017, Kaveh Madani received the Walter L. Huber prize “for groundbreaking research in developing methods for the allocation of scarce water resources merging conflict-resolution and game-theoretic concepts for application to complex water resources systems.”

In 2016, he was selected by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) as one of the four recipients of the Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists for "fundamental contributions to integrating game theory and decision analysis into water management models"

Kaveh Madani is a Henry Hart Rice Senior Fellow at Yale University and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. He was an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida before joining Imperial College in 2013.

Madani was recognized as one of the 10 "New Faces of Civil Engineering" by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2012 for "work and personal achievements representing the bold and humanitarian future of civil engineering”. This recognition is given by ASCE to those who have shown the potential for a long and distinguished career in the civil engineering profession and a commitment to excellence in everything they do.

Kaveh Madani was born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran to the parents working in the water sector. He did primary education in Tehran and received his BSc in Civil Engineering from University of Tabriz. He has a MSc in Water Resources from Lund University in Sweden and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis. He did his post-doctoral studies in Environmental Policy and Economics at the Water Science and Policy Center and the Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of California, Riverside.

He has previously served as the Chair of the National Committee on International Climate Change Negotiations, Vice President of the National Committee of Sustainable Development, Member of the Supreme Council of Iran's House of Farmers, Member of Iran's Supreme Water Council, and Member of the Iran-Afghanistan Negotiations Workgroup on Water. He led Iran's delegation in the 23rd United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) and the 3rd Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-3).