One could argue that Christiana Figueres, a 61-year-old Costa Rican diplomat, warded off global catastrophe. As former chief of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change, she orchestrated the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which, for the first time, got virtually all nations to take action on greenhouse gas emissions.
Figueres achieved unprecedented cooperation not by flexing her authority (the position carries very little) or fixating on the most powerful players but by inviting a massive number of diverse voices into a weblike conversation on solutions. Trained as an anthropologist, she bet that humans are motivated to work toward a common goal if given a structure of trust and hopefulness. So in the face of high stakes and daunting complexity, she created an even bigger mess, imbued it with optimism, then navigated through it. Now she is focused on carrying out the goals of the agreement as the head of Mission 2020, a plan to “bend the curve of emissions” over the next three years.
Although Figueres “never had a master plan” for her career trajectory, her résumé was seemingly built for leading at the intersection of science and policy: 14 years as a negotiator in the Costa Rican government; head of a climate-focused nonprofit; adviser to the private sector; bicultural, trilingual diplomat from an environmentally aware nation. Here Figueres shows what can happen when dynamic women lead the way. Edited excerpts follow.
Scientific American: In dealing with sweeping global issues, your leadership style involves ceding some control of the granular details. Do you think there's a “feminine” quality to this approach?
Figueres: It's dangerous to generalize and simplify: males do this, females do that. Having made that disclaimer, there's certainly a female energy—which we all have, by the way—that's much more flowing and organic, compared to a male energy, which we also all have, that is more directional and linear. We happen to call it “male” and “female,” but we could call it anything, like yin and yang. In different periods of my life, I did exercise many of my responsibilities with male energy in order to be at the table.
Looking back, I've always had a willingness to be vigilant to where the opportunity is. You don't have to progress in a straight line; you can be creative. Perhaps it's like a sailing strategy, tacking left and right, left and right. Or sometimes it's stepping back one foot so you can then step three feet forward. I think women are more willing to continuously learn, regardless of age.
Male energy tends to put things into black and white and force you to choose between A and B rather than saying, “there's A.A and then A.AB.” With regard to the Paris agreement, we had to be able to look at the shades of gray in between many realities, to see differences as complementary, not mutually exclusive. In particular, it was very important for me to change attitudes around the relationship between the global north and global south. We had to get to the point where there was full and deep recognition of historical responsibility but also at the same time a recognition of shared future responsibility.
As the architect of one of the most complex international agreements in history, how was your strategy different from previous efforts that failed?
The negotiating of the text itself is according to very strict U.N. procedures. But exactly how we were going to get there was the result of six years of conversation.
From my anthropology background, I drew a conviction that this had to be an inclusive process, not just federal governments. So we opened it up to the private sector, the spiritual community, the scientists. Humans tend to gravitate toward other conversations that are related to ours. There is sort of a self-organizing force that occurs, and better decisions are made when they are informed by as many different perspectives as possible. It's indicative of female energy to be on the lookout for which voices are not at the table and should be.
In the beginning, we tried to map it out: Who is doing what by when and with whom? I very quickly realized, “Thank heavens this is not map-able!” The participation was so broad, and the scenarios were changing so quickly that coordination was impossible. When you're dealing with something as decentralized and as universally felt as climate change, a logical flow of events is frankly not helpful. It diminishes the power of a potential solution. Instead we needed to get an agreement on the final place we all want to land—and that was provided by the science. The ultimate objective was an ambitious, fair structure that would bring everybody under one tent in a differentiated way. Then, we allowed for everybody to use the tools they have to apply the science to their particular country, sector or issue.
To all those who suggested, “This is too complex, we can't do it by 2015, let's begin a plan to delay by six months,” I put my foot down and said, “We are not even considering it.” You must allow for the process itself to be muddy because that is the space in which innovation occurs, ingenuity sprouts up and surprising alliances come forward. You want to be not only tolerant but even encouraging of the messiness—but with a hard deadline and a clear destination.
Opening up the conversation was one of the most difficult things we did but one of the most important. The result is a framework for which there is broad and deep buy-in. That's what makes it strong.
The dialogue around climate change can seem dire. Why is a hopeful attitude so important?
When you're inside the negotiations, that's one world, and then there's the outside world. I created a surround sound effect so that no matter where governments turned to in the outside world, they would feel encouraged that everyone was moving in the same direction. I wanted them to hear a chorus of yes, yes, yes. Yes, we can go forward with ambition, yes, this makes economic sense, yes, the technologies are there, yes, the science is there, yes, the morality is there.
Doesn't President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the agreement make the outlook gloomier?
The federal governments of the world did the big job that was expected from them in Paris. With or without the election of Mr. Trump, it's very clear they will all play a different role now. They'll fine-tune the rule books, but they cannot deliver the speed and scale. That's for the real economy actors, what I call the engine room: the private sector, subnational governments, investors and everyone else who is much closer to the emissions reductions themselves. That's why I'm down in the engine room now, with those who are directly responsible for the real work. It doesn't really have anything to do with Trump.
Recent studies suggest that giving women better access to education and reproductive freedom could have the single biggest impact on decarbonization. How does agency mitigate climate change?
One of the mistakes we've made as humans is not realizing that in the end, everything is interconnected. It's easier to look at large single sources, like heavy industry, rather than disseminated small sources of emissions. We look at the big head, which is power plants or transportation systems. But when you look at the long tail, it's clear that women have an important role in bringing down emissions because of the influence they have in the use of land, in food security, obviously in reproduction, and, of course, their contributions to modeling and forecasts, and as architects of adaptation strategies.
Assume two billion more people on this planet with all of the consequent impact that that's going to have. If women are given the ability to choose their reproductive behavior more intentionally, then we might have a different number. The better the quality of life of women through education, decisions over their own bodies, access to sustainable food production and clean energy technologies, the better we'll do with emissions.
After your tenure, more women are in positions of power at the U.N. But when it comes to negotiating climate solutions at large, there's criticism that it's not enough. What's your reaction to this?
I've become very intolerant of rooms, panels, photos, whatever, that have a huge preponderance of men. I was recently at an event that was 28 men and me. I used my keynote—as I often do—to point out how this is just not acceptable. I go, “Good morning, everyone. What's wrong with this room?” And then I'm silent and let them figure it out. Very often they don't even know what the heck I'm talking about. But I think we have to call it out constantly. Because otherwise we don't startle people out of the default. Making people feel uncomfortable is the only way things are going to change.