By Jay Lund
. . .
Professor Kaveh Madani of United Nations University has won this year’s Stockholm Water Prize, often known as the “Nobel Prize for Water”. (The official announcement is here.)
“The Stockholm Water Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognise Professor Kaveh Madani for his groundbreaking research and global leadership that have transformed how governments manage water crises. His work has shifted the focus of global water debates from infrastructure to governance and demonstrated how weak governance structures often lie at the heart of severe water crises. He has also advanced global understanding of transboundary water issues, developing science-based approaches to conflict resolution and sustainable management of shared river basins worldwide.”
His pioneering incorporation of game theory into water resources systems has moved the field beyond idealized assumptions of cooperation to more realistic assessments of incentives, conflict, negotiation, and institutional limitations. He also scientifically developed and formalized the concept of water bankruptcy, establishing an influential framework for analyzing and communicating chronic water depletion and governance failures around the world.
Through scholarship, institutional leadership, media engagement, and wide-reaching public communication, he translates complex water engineering and systems concepts into understandable policy-relevant narratives, helping elevate water from a technical management issue to a central public and policy concern. His crucible of science and policy was almost a challenging year of service as Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment in 2017-2018. He has shown that the field of water resources system analysis can be relevant, understandable, and rigorous for real water problems, for policy-makers and academics.
Kaveh Madani completed his PhD at UC Davis in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2009 and was a visiting researcher at UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences in 2014. Although his work is predominantly global, within California he has led significant analyses on high-elevation hydropower with climate change, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a game of chicken, better understanding of California’s levee systems, and overall climate change adaptability.
His insights on water bankruptcy and game theory are relevant to some major California water problems, such as nitrate contamination of groundwater, groundwater sustainability, Colorado River management, endangered species management, and the Delta. (These might be worthy topics for future blog posts.)
The Stockholm Water Prize will be formally presented to Professor Madani by H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden during a royal ceremony and banquet as part of World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2026. The award includes a cash prize and a distinctive crystal sculpture. Free online access is available to several Kaveh Madani talks at Stockholm Water Week at: https://www.worldwaterweek.org/2026/attending/attend-online. (Alas, this apparently will not include the prize banquet.)
Kaveh is the second Stockholm Water Prize winner from UC Davis, the first being Professor Takashi Asano in 2001.
About the Author
Jay Lund is an Emeritus Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California – Davis, and Vice Director at the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Further Reading
Madani K. (2026), “Water Bankruptcy: The Formal Definition,” Water Resources Management, 40 (78) doi: 10.1007/s11269-025-04484-0
Madani, K. (2026). Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. DOI: 10.53328/INR26KAM001
Madani, K., A. AghaKouchak, A. Mirchi (2016), “Iran’s socio-economic drought: challenges of a water-bankrupt nation,” Iranian Studies, 49 (6), 997-1016.
Madani K., Dinar A. (2013), “Exogenous regulatory institutions for sustainable common pool resource management: application to groundwater,” Water Resource Economics 2:57–76.
Madani, K. (2014), “Water management in Iran: what is causing the looming crisis?” Journal of environmental studies and sciences, Vol. 4, pp 315-328.
Madani K., Zarezadeh M., S. Morid (2014), “A new framework for resolving conflicts over transboundary rivers using bankruptcy methods” Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 18:3055–3068.
Madani K., Lund J. R. (2012), “California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conflict: from Cooperation to Chicken”, ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol. 138 (2): 90-99
Madani, K. and K.W. Hipel (2011), “Non-cooperative stability definitions for strategic analysis of generic water resources conflicts,” Water resources management 25 (8), 1949-1977
Madani, K. (2010), “Game theory and water resources,” J. of Hydrology, 81 (3-4), 225-238.
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