José María Figueres
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José María Figueres Olsen (San José, Costa Rica, December 24, 1954), politician, businessman and international expert on Sustainable Development and Technology. President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998, Minister of Foreign Trade 1986-1988, and then Minister of Agriculture 1988-1990.
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[edit] Biography
José María Figueres is the son of the famous humanist and thinker, and three time president of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer. His mother, Karen Olsen Beck, an American with Danish origins who adopted Costa Rican nationality, after serving as First Lady went on to become both a Member of Parliament and afterwards Costa Rican Ambassador. Thus, Figueres grew up in a family with a strong vocation towards public service.
He grew up in “La Lucha”, a farm community that his father Don Pepe founded in 1928. José María attended the public school Cecilia Orlich Figueres at “La Lucha”, and then went on to study at the Colegio Humboldt and Lincoln High School, both in San José. Upon graduating from high school he worked for a couple of years, and then was accepted into the Corps of Cadets at the United States Military Academy (West Point), where he graduated with the Class of 1979, having majored in Engineering.
Upon returning to Costa Rica, he led the restructuring process of the family businesses towards professional management, and turned Sociedad Agroindustrial San Cristóbal, SAISC into a leader in its field.
In 1986 he was invited by Nobel Peace Prize Laurate and President Óscar Arias (1986-1990), to join his government. After serving as both Minister of Foreign Trade and Minister of Agriculture, upon the completion of the governmental period Figueres decided to continue his academic studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, graduating in 1991 with a Master’s Degree in Public Administration.
After his return home, Jose Maria decided to seek the nomination of the political party he belonged to, Partido Liberación Nacional and become its candidate for the Presidential Election of 1994. After a heated and much disputed primary election process, Figueres won the parties’ nomination, and went on to the national election which he won in Feb of 1994. José María Figueres Olsen was elected President of Costa Rica for four years, thus becoming the youngest president of Costa Rica in the 20th century. During his presidency, Figueres implemented important transformations that opened opportunities for further development. His goal was clear: either the country shifted paradigms towards Sustainable Development and created new competitive advantages to extract value from the process of globalization, or the country would loose terrain in an ever increasingly complex world. Thus he led many important transformations in the economic, social, and environmental fields.
[edit] Political life
José María Figueres began his political career when he accepted the invitation of then President Oscar Arias to join his government. He was first given the responsibility of overhauling the ailing railway system, as President of INCOFER, the state railway company. Having successfully completed his mission, shortly thereafter he was appointed Minister of Foreign Trade. Subsequently, he was appointed Minister of Agriculture from 1988 to 1990. In this post, José María lead many important transitions of the agricultural industry towards a more dynamic and export oriented activity. After this tour of public service and while at Harvard as a student in a graduate program, Jose Maria observed the many changes that were occurring in the world as the Berlin Wall came down and the process of globalization began. Impressed by these far reaching changes, Figueres wanted to lead his country to take advantage of these transformations. He therefore decided to announce his candidacy for President in the 1994 elections, after completing his postgraduate studies at Harvard University.
In 1993 Figueres won the primary elections within his party Partido Liberación Nacional, and in February 1994 he was elected President of Costa Rica.
His governmental program was based on moving the country towards Sustainable Development, and was anchored by five pillars: First, to transform the Costa Rican society from a society divided by poverty and privileges, to an integrated society that provided the same opportunities for all. Second, Figueres worked to advance and promote the Costa Rican economy to become integrated in the globalized world economy. Third, to change Costa Rica from a country that had little knowledge of how to preserve its natural resources towards a country that understood the scarcity of its natural resources and took responsibility for preserving them. Fourth, Figueres committed himself to eliminate the inefficiencies and structural deficiencies of the governmental structure and establish a modern and more strategic leadership system for the country. Finally, his vision was to develop a more participative democracy in Costa Rica.
In sum, President Figueres established an integrated political platform based on the principles of sustainability, capable of generating improved competitive advantages for Costa Rica in the process of economic globalization. However, implementing this strategy was not easy as Figueres had to face pressures from a number of special interest groups, while attempting to convince the country of the necessary changes.
He proposed to develop a new international positioning for Costa Rica, based on the excellence of the human resources available within Costa Rica. With that objective in mind, he leveraged and advanced the achievements of the previous five decades in education, health, energy, telecommunications, environmental protection, institutional development and stable democracy. Although the broad changes and transformations he spearheaded were often not well received, the strategy proved successful. In May of 1998 José María Figueres passed on to his successor a country enjoying solid economic growth, based on a more open economy and on important quantities of direct foreign investment, mainly in the high tech field. Amongst other investments, Figueres is credited with having successfully negotiated the only INTEL investment in Latin America, which virtually revolutionized his country’s economy.
[edit] Achievements
[edit] President of the Republic of Costa Rica 1994-1998
- Reformed and reorganized many public institutions, including closing down some of them, to increase the efficiency of the State. Increased the legitimacy of the remaining public institutions to improve the governance of the country and consolidate democratic values.
- Launched several initiatives to improve national education, including a constitutional reform to dedicate 6% of GDP towards public education; introduced English as a second language in public schools from the first grade up; consolidated the installation of computer labs in high schools.
- Reorganized the social institutions to facilitate better services for the citizens of his country, thus, enabling greater social mobility for the most vulnerable sectors of the society.
- Created EBAIS (Primary Teams of Basic Health Care) as an effective provider of preventive medicine in the communities, primarily by giving easy access to medical services.
- Complied with the Agenda 21 for Sustainable Development, as announced at the Earth Summit in 1992. Ratified the international Biodiversity and Climate Change Conventions. Implemented important legislation in both areas and approved a first tax on carbon emissions in 1995.
- With a true Central American spirit, Figueres was the architect of the Centroamerican Alliance for Sustainable Development (ALIDES) signed by the region’s presidents in 1994. This regional integration agreement aimed to modernize the older Central American Common market Agreement, by creating common policies in broad-scale economic, social and environmental matters.
- Developed broad links with regional and international academic institutions. He worked very closely together with leading thinkers such as Michael Porter, Jeffrey Sachs, and Theo Panayotou. As a result of these efforts Figueres spearheaded programs improving the competitiveness of the Central American Region, and later established the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development based at INCAE, the region’s leading graduate business school.
- Established an innovative contractual regime to open investment and modernization by the private sector at the main international airport; Opened a second international airport in Liberia, Guanacaste, that helped the tourism industry flourish in the northern region of Costa Rica.
- Designed a profound reform to modernize the state-banking sector, including opening competition with private banks.
- Established a coherent strategy to boost development and create qualified higher paying jobs by attracting foreign investment to Costa Rica. Created a new category of national high tech exports, thanks to his personal efforts in attracting INTEL to establish themselves in Costa Rica, which lead to a creation of a cluster of high-tech companies based in Costa Rica.
- His government was the firs in modern Costa Rican history that refrained from irresponsible spending during the election cycle towards the end of his mandate. Thus for the first time, the incoming government did not have to increase taxes to cover past spending.
[edit] International Leadership
In 2000, Figueres was appointed Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, and independent international organization dedicated to improving the state of the world by bringing together world leaders to establish alliances that can influence regional and global agendas. Three years later he was appointed as the first CEO of the World Economic Forum. His responsibilities included coordinating the prestigious annual meeting of the Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together prominent corporate leaders, Heads of State and Government, as well as respected personalities from the academic, cultural and religious world. Among his greatest achievements while at the Forum was to strengthen the bonds between the corporate world and governmental and social sectors in order to identify their common long term interests and visions.
After leaving the Forum towards the end of 2004, Figueres joined the Felipe IV Group in Madrid, Spain as its CEO. This organization supports and collaborates with institutions working in the fields of Development, Dialogue, and Democracy around the world. Figueres is also a founding member (2001) of the Club de Madrid, an organization comprised today of almost 70 ex-heads of state and government, promoting Democratic values around the world. José María Figueres has actively participated and continues to do so as a leader and international expert in numerous international organizations, NGOs and businesses.
In his native Costa Rica, upon leaving government in 1998 President Figueres founded and lead Entebbe – Fundacion Costa Rica para el Desarollo Sostenible (Costa Rican Foundation for Sustainable Development). This organization leads and promoted initiatives and projects with national and international impact that encourage the incorporation and use of modern technologies to improve the quality of life in Latin American societies. The foundation started and developed pioneering programs, such as LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities), APVE (Clean Transport Alternatives) and CENTAIRE (Center for monitoring and evaluation of Air Quality in Central America). A large number of academic. social and communal organizations, as well as private sector partners contributed to the development of these programs.
Figueres has been a member of a number of prestigious boards in the environmental field. He was Chairman of LEAD as well as FUNDES Internacional. He has also served as a director of the,World Wildlife Fund, the Botanic Research Institute Texas, and the Stockholm Environment Institute. He continues to serve on the Board of the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Earth Council Geneva.
In 2000, he was called upon by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to chair a working group on Information, Communication, Technology (ICT). He was later elected Chairman of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (ICT).
In the same field of deploying technologies to boost development, together with Nicolas Negroponte and Jeffrey Sachs, Figueres founded the “Digital Nations Consortium”, a program overseen by the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the world of international business, Figueres has served on the Board of Terremark Inc, a publicly traded leading owner and operator of Network Access Points around the world. He is also a director of Grupo San Cristobal (SAISC) in Costa Rica, The Americas Group in the United States, and the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Group in Jordan.
Maintaining his links with the world of academia, he is a member of the Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
[edit] International Awards
President Figueres has lectured extensively around the world, on the topics of Sustainable Development and Technology applications for development. He is also the recipient of numerous awards. In 1995 he receive the Kew Gardens Annual Award. In 1996 he received awards from the Botanic Research Institute Texas and the State Botanical Garden in Missouri. In April 1998 he was the first recipient of the Global Prize from the World Bank's Global Environmental Fund for his leadership and efforts for the environment. In May 1998, he received the Liberty Prize from the Max Schmidheiny Foundation and St. Gallen University in Switzerland. In December 1998, he received an award from the Climate Institute in Washington D.C. In April 1999 he received the Order of José Matías Delgado in order the Grand Silver Cross from the Republic of El Salvador. In 2003, Figueres received the Sustainability Award in Switzerland.
[edit] Controversy
In 2004 a newspaper report claimed that Figueres received US$906,000 in bribes from Alcatel.[1][2]
The Congress Commission on Income and Public Spending issued him four subpoenas, but he never appeared in court. He limited himself to issue a written statement from Geneva, Switzerland where he currently lives. In light of this, Figueres was later charged with contempt of court. Charges were archived in September 2005.
Currently, the Attorney General has not issued any new information on the process. [3]
[edit] See Also
[edit] Links
- Dean's Alumni Leadership Council, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
- United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force
| Preceded by: Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier |
President of Costa Rica 1994–1998 |
Succeeded by: Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría |
