Christiana Figueres to stress the urgency of climate change response in a COVID world by Chloe Murdock on July 2, 2020 share Figueres Long before Christiana Figueres spearheaded the 2015 Paris Agreement as U.N. Executive Secretary for the U.N.’s Climate Change Convention, she was a teenager admiring Costa Rica’s endangered golden toad in the Monteverde Cloud Forest.