Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), has been named the ...

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Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate. The announcement was made at the World Water Day ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

The prize will be formally presented by H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden during World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2026. Often described as the ‘Nobel Prize of Water’, the Stockholm Water Prize is the most prestigious water award and honours outstanding contributions to the sustainable use and protection of water resources. Professor Madani’s selection is also a historic milestone for the global water community: at 44, he is the youngest laureate in the prize’s history, as well as the first UN official and the first former politician to receive the honour. The official Stockholm Water Prize citation recognizes Professor Madani for his “unique combination of groundbreaking research on water resources management with policy, diplomacy and global outreach, often under personal risk and political complexity“.

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Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Photo: UNU-INWEH
Professor Madani is internationally recognized for integrating game theory and decision analysis into conventional water resources management models. His work challenged the assumption of perfect cooperation in human-water systems and showed why technically optimal solutions often fail when they do not reflect real-world incentives, competing interests and institutional constraints. By bringing human behaviour into water modelling, he helped open new pathways for understanding water conflict, improving governance and fostering cooperation in regions where trust is scarce.

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