TCP Presenter Christiana Figueres Nominated for Top Climate Job
04/09/10
Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica is being considered by the United Nations for the role of Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the most senior climate position in the UN. She has been nominated for the position by Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica. Trained as a TCP Presenter in 2007, Christiana has been a member of the Costa Rican climate negotiating team since 1995. She was elected Vice President of the Bureau of the Convention 2008-2009 in representation of Latin America and the Caribbean, having previously represented the region on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism. Christiana founded and directed the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas, an NGO devoted to climate change capacity building.
Christiana’s experience and background will now be reviewed by UN officials along with her fellow nominees from countries including India, South Africa and Indonesia. A final decision will be made by July. If appointed to the post, Christiana would replace outgoing secretary Yvo De Boer, and would be tasked with restoring a sense of unity and shared purpose to the UN climate negotiation process.
Christiana took some time this month to answer a few of our questions via email:
What sparked your interest in climate change and in becoming a TCP Presenter?
Having experienced the disappearance of the golden toad, a species endemic to Costa Rica, during my lifetime because of changes in temperature, I was impacted by the fact that I am bequeathing a diminished planet to my daughters. I was determined to do something about this, and was benefitted by the fact that at the time, Costa Rica had already embarked on pioneering environmental and climate protection policies and instruments. I was intrigued by the possibility of taking lessons learned in Costa Rica to the rest of Latin America and thus in 1995 founded the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas, a think tank and capacity building institution dedicated to promoting the participation of Latin American countries in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
After many years of making public presentations on climate change and the international negotiations, I discovered that former Vice President Gore made a deeply compelling case in An Inconvenient Truth, and I wanted to be able to incorporate Mr. Gore’s work into my own. I thus applied to be trained by him, and have been inspired by his vision and commitment ever since.
*Note: Christiana was trained in Session Five in the United States in January 2007
Your key message is that climate change is now “very clearly a civil society concern.” Can you expand upon this thought?
The very fact that in Copenhagen there were 10,000 government negotiators but 30,000 non-governmental participants already proves that civil society is concerned and committed. As the negotiation process is led by the UN, governments will continue to take the lead. But over the past few years, civil society has begun to demand higher ambition from governments, both through domestic political processes as well as through eloquent participation in the international negotiations. This voice is most welcome. Climate change is not a theoretical problem. It has deeply painful human consequences, and the voice of those who are most affected is key to motivating ambition.
What step is next in UNFCCC process?
The Copenhagen Accord was a big step for the community of nations, but a small step for the planet. A big step for the community of nations because:
a- It established a maximum temperature increase of under 2 degrees C
b- For the first time, all large emitters and many small ones have made mitigation pledges public in the context of a multilateral framework
c- There is a commitment to transparency in the accounting of emission reductions
d- There is a commitment to initiate funding for both adaptation and mitigation with a sense of urgency: $30 billion over the next three years, leading up to $100 billion per year by 2020
e- There is an acknowledgement of the important role of deforestation
f- There is a recognition of the need for an incentive for low-emitting countries to grow along a low-carbon development path
A small step for the planet because:
a- The maximum temperature target of below 2 degrees needs to be further specified in order to ensure the survival of the most vulnerable
b- The current level of mitigation pledges is insufficient to reach even the 2 degrees
c- The accord does not have mid- and long-term reduction targets, resulting in a bottom-up pledge and review process
d- It does not define the architecture for finance, technology and capacity building
e- It is not legally binding
What does this mean for COP 16 in Cancun this summer?
As we move forward toward Cancun, we need to integrate the Copenhagen Accord into the two negotiation tracks: Kyoto Protocol and Long-term Cooperative Action. We need to identify what light the Copenhagen Accord can shed on these two tracks given that not all parties have signed on to the Accord. Further, in Cancun we need to be results-oriented. We have been working on the architecture of the new chapter of the climate regime for the past two years. It may be time to shift our focus to the concrete deliverables (e.g. fast track financing, pilot REDD projects, agreement on the framework to support adaptation) that could be put on the table in the short term, then return to the architecture later. Concrete deliverables will contribute to building trust, and trust is the scarcest resource in the system.
In this process, we have built too many walls and not enough bridges. This cannot continue. On an urgent basis we need to rebuild confidence in the UN process, in the achievability of our goals and in each other.
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