Christiana Figueres
Climate diplomat and author
Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican diplomat who led the United Nations climate negotiations that produced the 2015 Paris Agreement. She co-wrote The Future We Choose.
1 summary 21 min of listening
Born 1956 in San José, Costa Rica
About Christiana Figueres
Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican diplomat with experience in national, international and multilateral policy negotiations. In July 2010 she became Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), months after the failed Copenhagen conference of 2009. She spent the six years that followed rebuilding the worldwide climate negotiation process, and that effort led to the 2015 Paris Agreement. Her work has spanned energy, land use, sustainable development, technical and financial cooperation, and climate change. In 2016 she was Costa Rica's candidate for United Nations Secretary General, but she withdrew after gaining too little support. Figueres is a founder of Global Optimism, together with Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two co-host the podcast Outrage and Optimism and wrote The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis (2020), their first co-authored book.