Christiana Figueres
Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen (born 7 August 1956) is a Costa Rican diplomat who has led national, international and multilateral policy negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15 in Copenhagen. During the next six years she worked to rebuild the global climate change negotiating process, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historic achievement.
Christiana Figueres DBE | |
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Figueres in 2018 | |
| Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change | |
| In office 1 July 2010 – 18 July 2016 | |
| Secretary- General | Ban Ki-moon |
| Preceded by | Yvo de Boer |
| Succeeded by | Patricia Espinosa |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen 7 August 1956 San José, Costa Rica |
| Children | Naima Yihana |
| Parents |
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| Alma mater | Swarthmore College London School of Economics |
| Website | Official website |
| External videos | |
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| Christiana Figueres: The case for stubborn optimism on climate, TED Talks, 2020 | |
| Christiana Figueres: What I Really Care About, GOOD Magazine, 2020 | |
| Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres says Australia needs to ditch coal, Matter Of Fact With Stan Grant, ABC News, 2018 |
Over the years Figueres has worked in the fields of climate change, technical and financial cooperation, energy, land use and sustainable development. In 2016, she was Costa Rica's candidate for the United Nations Secretary General and was an early frontrunner, but decided to withdraw after garnering insufficient support. She is a founder of the Global Optimism group, co-author of The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis (2020) along with Tom Rivett-Carnac, and co-host of the popular podcast Outrage and Optimism.