Lowy Lecture Series: Global action on climate change: How the world is responding to the challenge - Christiana Figueres

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Christiana Figueres will review how a low-carbon future is a trend which recognises that everyone, every nation and every sector of society holds part of the solution to solving a global problem. The international climate change negotiations are the intergovernmental face of this global trend towards a low-carbon future: The world’s governments have advanced key elements for a next successful step in the international response to climate change, in Doha, this year. All major economies now have climate change legislation in place, with key energy and emissions-control components. Businesses around the world have taken the cue and begun to act in their own interests.

Christiana Figueres was appointed as the new Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 17 May 2010. The appointment was endorsed by the Bureau of the Convention.

Ms Figueres has been involved in climate change negotiations since 1995. She was a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team and represented Latin America and the Caribbean on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism in 2007, before being elected Vice President of the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties 2008-2009.

In 1995 she founded the Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas (CSDA), a non-profit think tank for climate change policy and capacity-building, which she directed until 2003. From 1994-1996, she served as Director of the Technical Secretariat, Renewable Energy in the Americas (REIA).

Ms Figueres has served on several boards of non-governmental organisations involved in climate change issues, including the Voluntary Carbon Standard. She is also a widely published author on the design of climate solutions, and has been a frequent advisor to the private sector on how to play a leadership role in mitigation.

Ms Figueres holds a Masters Degree in Anthropology from the London School of Economics, and a certificate in Organizational Development from Georgetown University. She was born in San José, Costa Rica in 1956 and is married with two children.