| Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 7, 1956 San José, Costa Rica |
| Spouse(s) | Konrad von Ritter |
| Children | Naima, Yihana |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College London School of Economics |
| Profession | Global climate change analyst |
| Website | FigueresOnline.com |
Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen (born August 7, 1956) was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 17 May 2010, succeeding Yvo de Boer.[1][2] She had been a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team since 1995, involved in both UNFCCC[3] and Kyoto Protocol[4] negotiations. She has contributed to the design of key climate change instruments.[5] She is a prime promoter of Latin America’s active participation in the Convention,[6] a frequent public speaker,[7] and a widely published author.[8] She won the Hero for the Planet award in 2001.[9]
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Christiana Figueres was born in San José, Costa Rica, into a family dedicated to public service. Her father, José Figueres Ferrer, was President of Costa Rica three times: 1948-49, 1953–1958, and 1970-1974. José Figueres Ferrer was the leader of the 1948 Revolution and is considered the founder of modern democracy in Costa Rica. He is most well known for having abolished the army in 1948 and established a broad system of checks and balances that are at the root of Costa Rica’s stable development to this day. Active in her own right, Christiana’s mother, Karen Olsen Beck, served as Costa Rican Ambassador to Israel in 1982 and was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the 1990-1994 period. The couple had four children. Christiana’s older brother José Figueres Olsen, was also President of Costa Rica (1994–1998), and is credited with having initiated the country onto a path of sustainable development which continues to this day. Younger brother Mariano Figueres Olsen is currently active in politics and manages the family firm, together with younger sister Kirsten Figueres Olsen.
Christiana grew up in La Lucha, the farm community founded by her father in 1928. There she attended the local Cecilia Orlich grammar school, before moving to the German Humboldt Schule in the capital city and later graduating from Lincoln High School. Having graduated at a very young age, she went to England for a year of A Level studies before entering Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, United States. As an integral part of her studies in Anthropology, she lived in Bribri, Talamanca, a remote indigenous village in the Southeastern plateau of Costa Rica for one year, designing a culturally sensitive literacy program which was used by the Ministry of Education for several years afterward.
Christiana graduated from Swarthmore in 1979 and immediately joined renowned botanist Dr. Russell Seibert in an effort to improve nutritional conditions in Western Samoa through the introduction of highly nutritious plants. She then went to the London School of Economics for a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology and graduated in 1981. It was in London where she met her husband, Konrad von Ritter.
Christiana Figueres initiated her life of public service as Minister Counselor at the Embassy of Costa Rica in Bonn, Germany, from 1982 to 1985. She directed the work of all departments of the Embassy, and re-negotiated the terms of technical assistance, development finance and cooperation between both countries. She was bestowed the Great Cross for the Honor of Merit by the German government for outstanding performance.
Returning to Costa Rica in 1987, Christiana Figueres was named Director of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Planning. There she designed and directed the negotiation of comprehensive financial and technical cooperation programs with eight European countries (total investment US $90 million), and supervised the evaluation of all national technical and financial assistance requests. A year later she was made Chief of Staff to the Minister of Agriculture. She supervised the execution of 22 national programs involving training, credit and marketing (credit portfolio US $200 million). She reorganized the Minister’s Bureau for greater teamwork and productivity, and designed coordination strategies among three major public institutions in the sector, eliminating duplications of services and contradictions in policy.
In 1989 she moved with her husband to Washington DC, and for several years devoted herself to the upbringing of their two daughters, Naima born in March 1988 and Yihana born in December 1989. At the same time she pursued her interest in institutional re-structuring and effectiveness building by first attaining the Certification in Organization Development from Georgetown University in 1991, and then the Certificate in Organization and Systems Design from the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in 1993.
In 1994 she re-entered professional life and became the Director of the Technical Secretariat of the Renewable Energy in the Americas (REIA) program, today housed at the Organization of the American States (OAS). She promoted hemispheric policies to advance the use of renewable energy technologies in Latin America, identifying barriers to investment and possible solutions. She developed coordination mechanisms among various US and Latin American agencies active in the field through close working relationships with the governments and private sectors of Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and Central America.
In 1995 she founded and became the Executive Director [9] of the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas, a non profit organization dedicated to promoting the participation of Latin American countries [10] in the Climate Change Convention. Figueres developed and led the four programs of the Center [11]: capacity building, policy reform, project preparation and carbon finance. Some of her main accomplishments include:
Representing the Government of Costa Rica [16] [17], Christiana Figueres has been a negotiator of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change since 1995 [18] [19]. In 1997 she provided critical international strategy for achieving developing country support and approval of the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism. From 2007 to 2009 she was Vice President of the Bureau [20] of the Climate Convention, in representation of Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the years she has chaired numerous international negotiations [21]:
Chair of the Contact Group on Guidance to the CDM Executive Board: Nairobi, December 2006 [22]; Poznan, December 2008 [23]; Copenhagen, December 2009 [24].
Chair of the Contact Group on flexibility mechanisms for the post 2012 regime, Bonn in June 2008 [25], Accra, Ghana [26] in August 2008, and Poznan in December 2008. [27]
Member of the Friends of the Chair Group that negotiated the Bali Action Plan for long term cooperative action of all nations, Bali, Indonesia, December 2007 [28].
Aware that developing countries would need an additional incentive to undertake mitigation efforts that go beyond traditional single-site CDM projects into the promotion of climate friendly policies and measures, in 2002 Figueres proposed a “Sectoral CDM” under which developing countries would be encouraged to develop regional or sectoral projects that may be the result of specific sustainable development policies. In 2005 she published a groundbreaking study proposing “programmatic CDM” whereby emission reductions are achieved not by one single site, but rather by multiple actions executed over time as the result of a government measure or a voluntary program.[10] She conceived Programmatic CDM as a way to mobilize mitigation activities that are highly dispersed and directly benefit the user, such as distributed renewable energy and end use energy efficiency, thereby bringing the benefit of the CDM to the household and small/medium enterprise level.[11] Programmatic CDM not only expands the sustainable development impact of the CDM, it also allows the scaling up of emission reduction activities in all sectors while reducing transaction costs, and enables the transition to more ambitious developing country emission reduction programs.
In December 2005 Figueres took the idea to the COP/MOP 1 in Montreal,[12] and achieved support for it on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. She then took the lead of negotiating the concept with the various groups of industrialized countries, finally attaing a COP/MOP decision to allow “programs of activities”[13] in the CDM (paragraph 20 of Decision CMP.1).[14] Two years later, as member of the CDM Executive Board, she achieved consensus on the rules and procedures for the submission of “programs of activities” in the CDM.[15][16] Programmatic CDM is today recognized as one of the most innovative reforms of the CDM, and one which holds the potential of promoting the adoption of climate friendly policies in developing countries.
Christiana Figueres has not only been active in the public arena and in the field of NGOs, she also collaborates actively with private sector companies that align themselves with climate friendly goals. Ms. Figueres currently serves as Senior Adviser to C-Quest Capital, a carbon finance company focusing on programmatic CDM investments.[17] She is the Principal Climate Change Advisor to ENDESA Latinoamérica, the largest private utility in Latin America with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. She is also Vice Chair of the Rating Committee of the Carbon Rating Agency, the first entity to apply credit rating expertise to carbon assets.[18][19]
Ms. Figueres is a frequent lecturer on climate policy [29][30][31] [32][33] and negotiations at academic institutions including Yale University, University of Chicago, Georgetown University, College of William and Mary, and Johns Hopkins University. She also has recurrent public speaking engagements by invitation of the World Bank, Inter American Development Bank [34][35], Corporación Andina de Fomento [36], OECD [37][38], Carbon Expo, International Energy Agency, UNIDO [39] LAC Carbon Forum [40][41], Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean [42], AVINA Foundation [43] [44] [45], Point Carbon [46], Environmental Finance [47], International Emissions Trading Association [48][49], PEW Center on Global Climate Change [50], Global Foundation for Democracy and Development [51], etc. She has been trained and authorized by Al Gore to deliver his presentation An Inconvenient Truth.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, gave the opening statement before delegates from 193 countries gathered in Cancun, Mexico on 29 November, 2010 by invoking the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools." She went on to say to the delegates, "Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful interlacing of many threads," said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. "I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel."[20]