Last Monday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon named Costa Rica’s Christiana Figueres to be the organization’s top official on climate change. The appointment comes after the resignation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, last February, considered to be a severe blow to the UN and ongoing climate negotiations. Figueres will succeed Yvo de Boer as the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).
Figueres’ resume is impressive and as the Financial Times points out, she is “well known in climate circles.” She has been a negotiator of the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol since 1995 and has played a role in designing various climate change instruments. No stranger to government and international negotiations (her father and brother have both served as the President of Costa Rica), Figueres has served as the director of international cooperation in the ministry of planning in Costa Rica, and chief of staff to the minister of agriculture.
Already, she is making her ambition clear. Her home country has declared its intent to become carbon-neutral by 2021, demonstrating, as Greenpeace notes, “the type of attitude we need on the global stage.”
In her first interview after being confirmed, Figueres called for a change in the international talks to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol. Speaking to the BBC’s One Planet program, the Costa Rican diplomat said it was time for countries to “make more effort.” She also urged negotiators to take a more “transparent” and “inclusive” approach to the talks, admitting that last year’s Copenhagen Accord was “not transparent and not inclusive enough.”
This month, Figueres noted that smaller countries, many of whom lobbied for her to replace the outgoing Yvo de Boer, were left feeling sidelined at the Copenhagen Summit once the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China broke away to finalise the agreement independently.
It is not coincidental that Secretary-General Ban would appoint someone from a developing nation. Any incoming chief will be facing, what is being increasingly recognized as a widening split between how rich and poor nations are able to slow climate change. The incoming delegate must be suited to foster negotiations between countries at various stages of growth, and possess a deep understanding of how the private sector and NGO groups fit in.
Christiana Figueres will begin her post in July 2010, the same month de Boer will step down. Her term starts just in time for the next round of scheduled climate change talks in the Cancun, Mexico, later in 2010.
