Christiana Figueres

San José, Costa Rica

Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen DBE (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 historical achievement.

Over the years Figueres has worked in the fields of climate change, sustainable development, energy, land use, and technical and financial cooperation. In 2016, she was Costa Rican 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-authored with Tom Rivett-Carnac of The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis (2020), and co-host of the popular podcast Outrage and Optimism.

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