Kaveh Madani (; born 1981 in Tehran) 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 is known for his work on integrating game theory and decision analysis into water resources management models. His research and outreach activities have influenced water policy in Iran. He also has played a major role in raising public awareness about Iran's water and environmental problems in recent years.
Known as "Iran's expat eco-warrior", he was considered the "Symbol of Expatriate Return" to Iran during President Rouhani's administration.
He is currently the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), and a Research Professor at the City College of New York. Prior to this, he has held positions at Yale University and Imperial College London.
Life and education
Kaveh Madani was born in 1981 in Tehran from a family from Amol, 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 is an Iranian citizen and has frequently denied the claims by the Iranian hardliners about having additional citizenships.
Academic career
Kaveh Madani is currently the Director of the UNU-INWEH, the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, known as the United Nations' Think Tank on Water. He is also a Research Professor at the City University of New York's Remote Sensing Earth Systems (CUNY-CREST) Institute at the City College of New York.
He joined the United Nations University as the Director of the Nexus Program at UNU-FLROES in 2021. Prior to that he was the Henry Hart Rice Senior Fellow at the Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and its Department of Political Science.
In 2013, he joined the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College London after serving as an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida for three years. He worked at Imperial College as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Environmental Management (2013-2015), Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Environmental Management (2015-2016), and Reader in Systems Analysis and Policy (2016-2017) before joining politics. Since 2017, he has been associated with Imperial College as a Visiting Reader (2017-2018) and a Visiting Professor (full) (2018–present). He served as the Centre for Environmental Policy's Director of Alumni from 2014 to 2017.
He has more than 200 publications and is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Fellow of EWRI (American Society of Civil Engineers).
Political career
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</ref> 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. 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 was interrogated many times during his tenure in Iran and was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) 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.