Clean Energy Future

The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, is in Australia this week to share her perspectives on global climate change action.

Ms Figueres will meet with senior Federal Government officials and leaders from the business, academic and NGO community.

The focus of these meetings will be on the progress being made towards a new global agreement, and the role that Australia can play in that process between now and 2015.

She will also address a series of World Bank meetings where China, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico will outlay their plans for domestic carbon pricing.

She will use the meetings to emphasise how much the UNFCCC supports the growth and eventual linking of carbon schemes around the world, and how it sees their emergence as evidence that carbon markets work.

‘These plans by China, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico are a very welcome addition to the carbon schemes already operating in countries and regions, like those in the EU, Australia and California,’ she said.

‘The UNFCCC encourages the growth and integration of carbon schemes around the world because they cut carbon emissions and support sustainable development.’

Ms Figueres, who has been involved in climate change negotiations since 1995, was appointed as UNFCCC Executive Secretary in May 2010.

She was a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team and represented Latin America and the Caribbean on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism in 2007, before being elected Vice President of the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties in 2008-2009.

In 1995 she founded the Centre for Sustainable Development of the Americas, a non-profit think tank for climate change policy and capacity-building, which she directed until 2003.