Yvo de Boer

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Secretary of UNFCCC Yvo De Boer opens the United Nations Climate Change Conference on December 3, 2007, in Bali Indonesia.

Yvo de Boer (born 1954, Vienna) is the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Prior to joining the UNFCCC, Mr. De Boer was Director for International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment of the Netherlands. He was in charge of international policy, both in the context of the European Union, as well as involving broader international cooperation.

He also served as Deputy Director-General for Environmental Protection in the same Ministry, as Head of the Climate Change Department and has worked in the fields of housing and public information. He focused mainly on the climate change negotiations both before and after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol.^[1] Mr. De Boer has also worked for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) earlier in his career.^[2]

He was born in Vienna and is married with three children. As the son of a Dutch diplomat, he traveled the world extensively before entering boarding school in the United Kingdom and obtaining a technical degree in social work in the Netherlands.^[3]

In Bali, 2007, Mr. De Boer saved the conference from being a disaster, by convincing the Americans to join negotiations.