Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen is a Costa Rican diplomat who has led national, international and multilateral policy negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15 in Copenhagen. During the next six years she worked to rebuild the global climate change negotiating process, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historic achievement.
Figueres in 2018
Figueres with Ban Ki-Moon at the Cancun conference
Adoption of the Paris agreement
Christiana Figueres at Stockholm Resilience Centre for Mission 2020
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change. It is an international treaty among countries to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system". The main way to do this is limiting the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It was signed in 1992 by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty entered into force on 21 March 1994. "UNFCCC" is also the name of the Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the convention, with offices on the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany.
UN Campus, Bonn, seat of the secretariat
A "family photo" in 2016, organized by Greenpeace, at the entrance to the United Nations, with a banner reading "We Will Move Ahead". It highlighted the resolve, despite all the differences, that we will continue to pursue strong climate action, moving towards 100 per cent renewals and aiming for 1.5C target.