SIGN UP FOR OUR The Princess of Asturias award of 2016 for International Cooperation was given to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Costa Rican Christiana Figueres and Mexican Patricia Espinosa former and current Executive Secretaries of the UNFCCC received the award given by King Felipe VI of Spain.
“On behalf of all my colleagues at the UNFCCC, I would like to thank the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award committee and the judges for the bestowing upon us of this prestigious recognition of our work and its contribution to international cooperation.
I sincerely believe the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which in many ways took over two decades in the making and has been the work of many, many hands, marks a milestone in respect to nations cooperating under the UN to deal with an overarching and systemic threat to lives and livelihoods everywhere.
The Paris Agreement is testimony that multilateralism is alive and well and can serve as a catalyst and a beacon for international cooperation across a myriad of challenges and not just sustainable development in the 21st century. The agreement and the positivity it has generated provides seeds for a new and renewed engagement on peace and security across the globe which is at the heart of the UN’s raison d’etre,” said Christiana Figueres.
Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC and Espinosa as president of the Climate Convention that took place in Cancun, Mexico in 2010 were in charge of rescuing the negotiation process after the failed COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen. The work done during six years of negotiations and finally lead to the 2015 Paris Agreement which is recognized as a historical achievement.
The jury of the Princess of Asturias Award recognized “the more than two decades of work by the UNFCCC with the purpose of reducing the human impact in climate change”.
