— Inner Mastery, Outer Impact —
Master Your Inner Core with our 9-day Reflection Journey
Christiana Figueres is one of the world’s most influential climate leaders, best known for her role as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where she led the six-year diplomatic effort that culminated in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, uniting 195 nations in a shared climate commitment. After leaving the UN, she co-founded Global Optimism, a social-purpose organization advancing the mindset and momentum needed for global climate solutions. She also co-hosts the award-winning podcast Outrage & Optimism, one of the world’s top climate podcasts, and is the co-author of the international bestseller, The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, which introduces the mindset of “stubborn optimism” and outlines the actions required to build a regenerative future.
What does it take to get the whole world to agree with you? Where do all great change movements begin—and what kind of leadership can unify nations in a time of deep division? Which leadership coach can you turn to in every season of change—timeless, wordless, and always present? What’s the connection between personal and planetary resilience? And why is spiritual grounding essential for today’s leaders and changemakers?
Find out from Christiana Figueres, exclusively in conversation with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa on Intersections Podcast.
This episode offers key insights on:
Greetings! A warm welcome and a return back to Intersections. Our focus here is on helping to expand the sense of possibility that we have about what we can manifest individually and collectively in the world today by dissolving boundaries, by creating intersections and connections between all aspects of life.
Today, it is my joy to have with us someone who is doing this kind of dissolving across so many different, very powerful fronts between the material and the spiritual, between humanity and, more broadly, nature and the planet, between life and work and our role as citizens in the world, between our preoccupation with the present moment with today, but also our deep concern about the future, the future of humanity and the future of the planet. So, we have with us today Christiana Figueres, who is one of the world's most influential climate leaders, best known for her role as the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where she led the six year diplomatic effort that ultimately culminated in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, uniting 195 nations in a shared climate commitment.
After leaving the United Nations, Christiana founded Global Optimism, a social purpose organization advancing the mindset and momentum that we need for global climate solutions. She also co-hosts the award winning podcast Outrage and Optimism, one of the world's top climate podcasts, and is the co-author of the international bestseller, “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis”, which introduces the mindset of stubborn optimism and outlines the actions that it requires to build a regenerative future.
What a joy to have you with us today, Christiana. Warm welcome.
Thank you very much. Thank you for asking me to join you on your podcast. It's so fun to talk to podcasters in between us. Very fun.
What a beautiful new development, right? In the history of thought, of idea sharing, connection and broadcasting a media for any or all of us to have these platforms for building kinship and offering our voices to the world.
Absolutely.
Let's actually maybe start with one of those, big bang moments that happened in the history of collective action in recent times. And that was the Paris Accord. You are one of the primary authors of that.
Christiana, by the way, one of the things it reminds me of is another very epic moment from years past, which is, when the United Nations was coming together and there was a lot of hope in the world after a broken few decades between the First and the Second World War and Eleanor Roosevelt was sent from the United States as one of the emissaries to help support the development of that institution. As part of that, she was thrust into a role to help bring nations together in a sense to affirm certain rights of humanity of their citizens around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Not an easy task, but one that she really pursued along with others on her team to great effect. I was finding a connection to that when I was seeing what you did so artfully at the Paris Accord. So, there was this moment with the Kyoto Accords that, in some ways, started us on a path of collective action, which then broke down with the Copenhagen moment where things just didn't really happen in any successful way at all. And so the world was left a little bit feeling desolate and disappointed. Then you get appointed to actually steward us out of that deep and dark place after the Copenhagen Summit, that didn't go well.
Can you talk a little bit about what was happening for you in that moment when you took upon that mantle at a time when, in a sense, hope had been severely compromised and what mindset you took in moving us into a very different goal and outcome and process in the Paris Accord?
Yeah, sure. Well, as you have mentioned the Copenhagen climate meeting that occurred at the end of 2009 ended up in very little success, and mostly ended up in acrimony, mutual blaming and just all trust being demolished. Trust between countries, trust between countries and the Secretariat. Trust in the UN and everything. It was sort of a hydrogen bomb that destroyed the atmosphere of trust. And as you mentioned, the then Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon asked me to basically pick up the pieces of that international political process and see what we could do about it. Nobody had a really good sense of what the next steps could be. But, someone needed to basically pick up the pieces. Sort of the strangest terms of reference I've ever been given for a job, “Pick up the pieces out of the trash can and see what you can do.”
I do remember my very first press conference as a newly minted executive secretary, where some journalists asked me, “So, do you think that a global agreement will ever be possible? Because that is what we had tried to do in Copenhagen?” and without filtering through my brain, what came out of my mouth was, “not in my lifetime.” And that was a really seminal moment for me because I heard myself speak what the world was feeling. That was definitely the global mood on climate at the time, was that it would never be possible to get a global agreement on climate, and I really thought about that very carefully. I asked myself if that is true, that we can never get to a global agreement on how to decarbonize the economy. What is the consequence of that? The consequences were so dire, especially in developing countries, that I did a 180 degree turnaround within myself first to be clear with myself that that is not what I wanted to give my thought and time and energy to. I do not want to give more thought in time and energy into not knowing where we're going. It was just to be responsible with respect to children, especially in developing countries. So I knew that I had to lead a global turnaround, and I thought, a global turnaround, how does that happen? And where do you start? And of course, very quickly I realized it had to start with myself.
I had to first turn my own attitude around and truly get in touch with the possibility. No guarantee, but the possibility that I could open enough space within me to be able to open space within everyone else to begin to weave a process slowly but surely, that would lead us to a global agreement. It was a real aha moment for me because it was, yet again, not that it was the first time in my life, but it was a very clear moment in my life in which I realized the change has to happen internally. First, I have to change my mindset, and then I have to help those that are immediately around me. So I thought of it as concentric circles with myself in the center, because that's the piece that I can really change. And then the 500 people in the Secretariat who were very despondent about what had happened and bring them back into a sense of possibility, excitement, commitment and determination over time, and then work with 195 countries that had to do this work and then add another concentric circle, which was everyone else other than federal governments, subnational governments, the private sector, the investment sector, the industrial sector, youth, activists, spiritual leaders, older people, everyone else who could actually help to hold this space and to weave a tapestry of possibility.
That was the process that I went through for several years, which then slowly restored trust in the system, in the process and eventually led to the Paris Agreement.
So beautifully put. I'm seeing almost a master class in transformative leadership slowly unfold in the commentary that you're just giving us. There are a few pieces of it that I would want to take out, analyze and talk to you about. But before I do that, there's a piece to this that I'm wondering if you can do a little bit more of a deep dive on, which is, as I recall and understand the previous step towards successful joint initiative across the world was the Kyoto Protocol, and that was done across the developed nations, then the Copenhagen thing happened, and all of this was done in a more traditional form of how change is supposed to manifest, which is some small group of people come together and make a certain decision and then broadcast it to the rest of the world in a top down kind of way. It might have worked for a few developed nations in the Kyoto moment, but in Copenhagen, it didn't work at all. Then a wider net was cast to the developing nations as well. Now, suddenly you had a much larger group of nations to be corralled, and it just wasn't working. And so you took a very different approach in the Paris Accords.
Could you talk a little bit about that? What motivated that and what was that approach and how did it yield a different kind of an outcome?
There actually is a huge difference between the Kyoto Protocol as it was adopted and what happened in Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol was a very widely participatory process in which we all participated, and I was there in 1997, representing my own country. The result of that negotiation, however, was to assign emission reduction or environmental responsibility only to industrialized countries, not to developing countries. For the simple reason, at that time, 1997, it was very clear that the industrialized nations that had caused climate change, and that continued to emit much more than developing countries. So because of that fact, what we did was, all of us together, there was no one left out, we adopted a call that assigned reduction responsibilities to developed countries and only voluntary action to developing countries, and that was in agreement among all of us.
Fast forward Copenhagen, there was an attempt to do something different. But as you say, unfortunately the process was not a very transparent process. And in the end, not that it was designed this way, but in the end, because of all of the acrimony, there were some countries whose leaders locked themselves into a small room, agreed among themselves, and then thought that they could just take their agreement to the rest of the world and have it be adopted, which of course, did not go over well at all, and was the cause of the breakdown of trust. So two very different circumstances in Kyoto and in Copenhagen.
In Paris, what we did was we built up the process of trust building, and alongside that, we built up the sense of actually what we want is something that is going to be long term. This is going to be for several decades, not just for eight years, which is what we had under the protocol. We need something that is going to act as the legally binding guardrails for the growth of the global economy without carbon, a decarbonized economy that continues to grow and continues to bring more and more benefits, especially to developing countries but that decarbonizes and that cannot be done in 4 or 8 years. We knew that that would take several decades. So we wanted a long term, legally binding agreement that would bring all countries under its wing, because by that time we understood that several of the emerging developing countries were already assuming huge responsibility for their emissions. So we wanted all countries in a differentiated manner, of course, differentiated because there's different responsibilities under different capacities to deal with this. But our aspirations were that we would have this long term agreement to guide the global economy, that every single country would be included, and that we would be guided by science so that we would get to the point at which the decarbonized society was within the range of what science tells us is going to be safe for future generations.
We had a very clear context of boundaries within which we wanted to work. And in case that wasn't enough, we also decided a couple of years before that we wanted this to be adopted unanimously and not just by consensus, which most of the other agreements had been adopted by consensus, leaving some countries out. We understood that the consequence for every single country is so huge that we wanted it by unanimity. So you try to bring your family unanimously to agree where you're going to go on the weekend, let alone what is going to be happening in the global economy for 20, 30 or 40 years.
That was the task that we gave ourselves. And of course, that meant a lot of trust building. It meant a lot of what I call in my Buddhist tradition, a lot of deep listening, which is truly listening with an open heart and an open mind to understand what every single country needs, what every sector needs, what every generation needs. It really is more listening. Once you have the context of where you're going, then it is walking back and listening to the needs and interests of everyone in order to figure out how everybody will participate.
There's so much one could unpack there. In the confines of the time we have and the richness of all the themes and topics we want to talk about, I'll resist my temptation to double click and ask you for more on this and more on that, and just encourage our listeners to do their own research. Perhaps you can point them to the key writings and places where they can actually learn more.
For now, what I wanted to observe is that, in some ways, the approach you used may be much more broadly necessary and of value today in so many different aspects of our life. Because while we are continuing to face, huge challenge on climate, today we're seeing this, what they call the poly-crisis, the multiplicity of issues on which we are facing all kinds of seemingly intractable struggles, whether it's the rising income inequalities or geopolitical tensions or political and social divisions or just the mental health and other such issues, questions about immigration and what's the right ultimate endgame there and any or all of that. And, it seems to me in some ways and I'm sharing this to get your reactions and thoughts to it, that there is some old way of being, in operating, that is starting to break down the systems of the past. Trust is breaking down a lot, at least in the statistics I've seen from America and Europe and institutions of all kinds. And if this old system is getting dismantled, then it means that the kind of leadership that was produced in these systems, which was trained to protect these systems and to optimize these systems, doesn't work when we have to find a way to honorably let some of these systems kind of go and transition into new practices, new methods, new values, new points of collaboration and integration. It will therefore require a stewardship role from a leader very different from, “Hey, just trust me. I've been doing this for 30 years. That's why you promoted me to CEO or president or this. I'll make sure that this happens in six months. This happens in a year. This happens in two years. Because I know how to play this game well.” The rules of the game are changing. The stakeholders are changing. There's less that you have in control. And so, I like to think about that as a transformative form of change making, very different from a traditional form of leadership. And often it requires a lot of sacrifice from people, requires people to elevate their gears much beyond just zero sum games and what's in it for me or what's in it for my group? And how can I materially maximize my outcome? And it requires ideas from anywhere or everywhere. Who knows what ideas will come from where and at what pace, and at what point will a breakthrough come?
Anyway, I've just been thinking a little bit about this model of leadership which I see a Gandhi embody, Martin Luther King embody and Mother Teresa embody. And actually, in many ways Christiana, I saw from what you were doing in the Paris Accord, but it was done with a lot of study of these kinds of former transformational moments and movements, or just coming from your own intuition and experiential journey, but I saw you manifest many of these more transformative capacities.
You know, I really agree with you that the moment calls for a different kind of leadership. I don't think of it as a breakdown of something, but rather the evolution of that which was there. Because, I do think that the leadership that we have had has had some benefits and some results. And we've also paid a high price for that. So I see it as an evolution. What can we learn from where we were? What have been the positives and what can we continue to mature and evolve toward a leadership that is more inclusive, that is more collective than anything?
I'm actually writing a book about leadership for change, because I think those two things are coming together. We can no longer simply draw very tight boundaries around that which we would like to lead or change, because everything is interconnected. So we have to begin to think about everything in a systemic way. According to systems theory, understand that everything is interconnected, and that moving a piece at one level of the system moves many things at other levels of the system. That's the beauty and the promise of working with a systems theory approach. For me, that is one of the shifts that we're seeing is from linear and disconnected and tightly bound to systemic and organic, constantly changing and interacting. That's one shift that we're seeing.
And then the leadership for that changing understanding of society and of the economy. The leadership is then obviously also different to what we've had, because if you have a linear, static, sort of geometrically structured system structure that you think that you're in, then, of course, that gives you, unsurprisingly, the authority of a single, decisive figure that decides everything, controls decisions, and then just gives mandates down the pyramid. Whereas, if you understand that we're actually in very much of an organic, flowing, constantly changing, interacting, alive system, then the leadership for that is one that requires humility, above all, to recognize that no one person can see the whole, that the wisdom in the system has to invite many different perspectives. It is a leadership that is committed to remaining curious, open, and above all, willing to say, “I don't know,” individually. We will be able to figure it out. So how do you surround yourself with people who will be able to provide different perspectives than your own, not surround ourselves with people who agree with us, because what's the point there? So radical inclusion is something that also has to be there that welcomes all voices, especially those that dissent. A leadership that invites challenge, which knows that innovation emerges in diversity, not in sameness, that welcomes contrary views, that understands that contrary views at the table are not a disruption, but a gift. And that is devoted to weaving differences into strength.
So it is a very different kind of leadership that evolves from where we were, but not disconnected from the understanding of where we are. It takes the understanding that we are in a world that is increasingly interconnected and increasingly similar to nature, because nature is like that, nature is in you. The ecosystem has many different plants and animals that interact with each other, and the ecosystem thrives because of the diversity and thrives because there is no one single figure that is leading there. So the more that we turn to nature, the more that we understand that nature is our teacher, the more we understand what an ecosystem in the natural world is, the more we can begin to construct the ecosystem in our social and political realities.
Beautiful! Is this what your book is going to be focusing on? The themes you've just talked about?
I hope so. It's not an easy book to write, but I'm still trying.
Yeah, you got to make space for it, Christiana. I hope you're making time to step away from all your other very important responsibilities. Because it sounds like a very important piece of work and really speaks to the complexities, but also the opportunities and the time of today to advance and make more, if you want to call it “unsophisticated,” our minds to be able to understand this web of networks and interconnected relationships and how to activate it and maximize the collective good, some kind of shift from individual intelligence to collective wisdom. That's what I was hearing, what you were saying, which is beautiful.
When I was researching some of the science for my book, I was thinking about the topic of love and the interconnectedness of things, as you talked about in nature and in the human biology and everything, it was very sweet when I discovered that even in the larger kind of macro environment, Jupiter apparently protects the Earth from meteorites. It acts like a shield gravitationally kind of just pulling a lot of stuff which otherwise could have hit planet Earth. The moon, because it's there, it actually allows the Earth's axis to be more stable so it doesn't get wobbly. Otherwise, you would have had very dramatic fluctuations of temperature, and humanity would not have been able to survive on the planet if it wasn't for the moon stabilizing the axis.
I mean, who knows, maybe everything in the cosmos is actually interconnected and has its place and its role.
Why do you say maybe?
Yeah, because I just want to be inclusive of those who think, nah, it's all random. But, you're right. I'm at home today in the place I grew up in Chandigarh in India. I was in this home from the age of 11. And one of my fondest memories as a child is just going up to the roof, sometimes at night, quietly by myself and just talking to the stars from there and feeling like I'm just deeply connected to that star. I can't be not connected. There is some conversation, energetic-sharing about what is happening. So to that end, I applaud you for taking on these kinds of deep, mystical, philosophical ideas, but also seeking to encourage people to manifest them in practical ways to really meet the moment and be inspired by these to guide us in our path towards leadership and citizenship.
I think I also really liked one thing you talked about is that instinctually when you responded to my framing, you want to honor the kind of leadership we've had. You want to honor the history we've had, but also open ourselves to transitioning from it to something else. I found that to be really one of the common themes I've seen across the Mandelas and the Lincolns and these inspirational figures from history is that they see this carrying of this torch, in one generation and passing it on to the next generation. And when they pass it on to the next generation and each time to do a little bit better than the previous one. So you appreciate and honor the efforts of the past, but also you want to do more, you want to do something different, you want to do better.
There's also this North Star thing to what you're saying, which is to have an ideal in mind of what the outcome is. But, you don't really know. You said, I don't know. Sometimes you have the humility of saying, I don't know what the path is. We have this quest to head in that direction, to head towards goodness, towards ultimately manifesting something more beautiful and reassuring for the world. But how we get there and sometimes the twists and turns that will come along the way, we don't know. I do think that's a big book in the making. So thank you for sharing that.
Actually, it’s a little book. I don't want it to be more than 50 pages long, that’s my aspiration. It's a little book about a big topic.
Well, then I expect every sentence to be oozing with so much truth in it. Much looking forward to that.
I want to read a quote to you. This is from a mystic who has been deeply influential in my life, Yogananda. I'm going to use this quote as a way to shift us into the next gear, which is to invite you into talking about some of the inner transformational shifts that happened to you, starting with what was happening during the Paris Accord work that you did, but then, has been a transformational force for you. And in the work that you manifested since then.
And so here's one thing he said. This is the mystic teacher from India, who went to the United States and offered a kind of a modern day rendition of yoga, often considered the founding father of yoga in the West. He said, “Just like the human body, the Earth suffers from inharmonies and disease. And it is because the combined action of all people all over the world affects the planet on which we live. The good and bad karmic conditions created by man determine and influence the climate. They affect the wind and the ocean, even the very structure of the Earth, sometimes causing even earthquakes. When materiality predominates in man's consciousness, there is an emission of subtle negative rays. That cumulative power disturbs the electrical balance of nature. And that is when earthquakes and floods and other disasters happen. God is not responsible for them. It is man's thoughts that have to be controlled before nature can be controlled.”
I was really struck with that next chapter that started to unfold from you. You know, it was kind of funny because on the one hand, there's this incredible power and grace to your work in the Paris Accord. And yet there was this inner turmoil that you were going through just that very time. It was as if a higher power was inviting you to the next level of growth in you, the next level of awareness building in you. And through that, it is manifesting something so important in the world. So can you talk a little bit about that?
With deep respect for Yogananda, who has been such a seminal thought leader for so many millions of people, I don't agree with the last bit that you read, because we do not control nature. Well, I think that is exactly the problem that we're in, that for at least 100 years, we have thought that we can control nature, that we humans are superior, that we are entitled to extract from nature, use and then discard. The extractive mentality that we have used over the past 100 years is, I think, what has led to climate change to biodiversity disaster, etc., because we have thought that we, one species are superior over the all of the other 8 million species, and that we have the right to control and extract from nature. And I think that is exactly the problem, whereas the option is to see that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. We are a part of nature. We happen to be one species that can think and talk and move on two feet. But there are 8 million other species here with whom we inter are. So for me, what is really important in my life is to understand the inter-being of the whole web of life and understand that it is inasmuch as I bring myself, my thoughts, my words, and my actions into harmony with the entire web of life, then I contribute to the thriving of life. Life actually wants to create more life. As we have seen over 4.5 billion years of evolution of this planet, life wants to create more and more life. And it is us humans who have arrived here in the last blink of an eye and thinking that our presence here is actually to destroy life and to use it for our selfish benefit.
That is, for me the shift that we are in right now, is to understand that we are very powerful for sure, but still a piece of nature, and that we are constantly interacting and inter-being with nature, that there is no such thing as us being over here and nature being over there. And as much as we understand that, then we can begin to think, act and speak in consonance and in harmony with the rest of the web of life.
Beautiful. I wish Yogananda was here to have this direct discourse with you about what just transpired. My sense of reading from what he said, to do a little bit more justice to, I think the common ground that you stand on and what you've just so beautifully articulated about the need to be in tune with nature, for example, one of the big contrasts I saw when I moved from India to the United States is that, I found in the West and in the US, when you see a big ocean, you want to be the first one to swim the fastest through it. When you see a big mountain, you want to be able to climb it without oxygen. So there's a desire to conquer and dominate. Whereas in India, when you typically see an ocean or you see a big mountain, you fall on your knees in devotional attunement to like, Wow! This is a grand and beautiful painting in the sky as an aspect of the divine creative force in the universe. So, I do think that there is a lot of power and beauty to what you just shared about just shifting our relationship with nature into one where we are integrated with it, but also in a sense, in awe of its intricacy and richness and all that it can offer. I think that's what I'm hearing and sensing from you.
I think what I took from that Yogananda quote was just this idea that to your point that humankind is not divorced and separate from nature, that our energies, our actions, our thoughts or ideas actually have a role to play in the phenomena that manifests in nature. And therefore if we want nature to be in harmony with us, we have to be in harmony with ourselves and with each other. I think that's where I see common ground.
So can you talk a little bit about spiritual infrastructure and about the inner transformation and what you are seeking in convening climate activists today, and where it stems from in your own life journey as to what makes you feel that it's really important to do this inner tilling of the soil and these inner shifts in order to ultimately manifest what we all want to on the outside and solving some of the hard problems in the world.
Yeah, I mean, it's very consistent with what we have been speaking about, that what is present at one level of the system is present at all levels of the system. Because I work very actively with many people in the climate and biodiversity protecting community, what I have sensed, especially from young people, but also from not so young people over the past 3 to 5 years, is a growing sense of desperation and fear about are we going to make it or are we actually seeing the demise of the human species here? Are we actually committing collective human suicide? Are we destroying our planet? Why is it that despite all the science being very clear in front of us, why can we not make different decisions and different investments, etc. and I've just been picking up such a sense of fear, anger, resentment, and breakdown? So many people who have worked for years and don't feel that there is enough progress or just having breakdowns, meltdowns, and, because I had a personal breakdown in the year 2013 and through that discovered the teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and that saved my life and brought me into my chapter of spirituality.
I also thought, well, if discovering a spiritual path has helped me so much, both personally and in my work, what if I could help others to discover a spiritual path? So now for 3 years we have been hosting retreats together with the monastics of Plum Village for people who are working intensely in the climate space or in the biodiversity protection space with one single purpose, and that is to help these people enhance their personal resilience.
We have people from many different religions, many different spiritual paths. There has not been a religion or spiritual path that has not joined our retreats. They leave feeling like they have gained more depth in their own practice, which is exactly the point, because what we're doing here is helping people to dig in deeply into themselves and deepen their own personal resilience in whatever way they feel that that works for them and makes sense for them. And then to be able to go back into their work with a better sense of grounding, a better sense of who they are, a better sense of how they can interact with other people and with their work in order to then work for planetary resilience. So those two things for us are intimately interlinked. More personal resilience, more planetary resilience that is possible. So all of these colleagues who have done this feel that they go back out and back to their work with the possibility of having a much deeper impact in their work and at a much lower personal cost. So it's a pretty good rate of return that you can have more impact and less personal cost. Rather turn that around to be personal growth and then the personal growth leads to more impact in the world.
That's beautiful. You have said, “For me, my spiritual practice is not separate from my work. It is not in parallel. It is the foundation. It allows me to be aligned, to show up with clarity, compassion and conviction.” I love that.
Thich Nhat Hanh, who is such a beautiful and inspiring figure, you've been so thoughtfully folding your hands a couple of times, and we have to do that when we talk about him. He said, “No mud, no lotus”. The idea that it's in muddy conditions that the lotus blooms. You've said it beautifully as well, that lots of mud, lots of lotuses. I love that because we have one child, my wife and I, and she's our daughter. And even before she was born, we didn't even know if it was going to be a girl or a boy. But we had assumed that if it was a girl, we were going to name her exactly this, Lotus, for the same reason. Her name is Mrinalini. Mrinalini is an Indian language name for the lotus. The idea of blooming in muddy waters.
Oh how beautiful! The idea of blooming in muddy waters. Yeah.
So, as we come to an end, Christiana, maybe just for a brief moment, you live in this beautiful land of Costa Rica. One of the very epic things that has happened in the serene, very peace loving, very sort of invested in collective development sort of world of Costa Rica, is the fact that at some point the government was bold and visionary enough to constitutionally disband this army. And there was somebody special in your life who had a role to play in it. Can you share that with us?
Yeah, that is my brilliant father for whom all Costa Ricans will be forever grateful. He was a farmer. He was not a politician. He was just a farmer, way out in the mountains. He took note of the fact that the government that had been democratically elected in Costa Rica decided that they didn't want to respect democracy anymore and that they wanted to stay in power and use the army of Costa Rica to repress any push for transparent and valid elections. So he warned the government that if they continued to do that, that he would lead a revolution, which, of course, they didn't believe because he was just a lonely low farmer. No one had ever heard of him. But, they pushed him to the brink of deciding that he would. And so he organized a revolution. An armed revolution of peasants and university students and professors who all left their farms or the university and went and took up arms, were trained militarily by my father. He had never been a military person, but he had studied the Napoleonic Wars in books, and he knew military strategy. And so they were trained by him. And, they led a revolution against the government army and they were successful.
So my father took over power. And the first thing that he did was to disband both armies. He sent his own army back. He said, you give me all of the armament back here, and you go back either to your books or to your plows, depending on where you came from. But all the armament stays here. And then he disbanded the National Army and together with quite a few other thought leaders, he rewrote the Constitution. And so today the army in Costa Rica simply doesn't exist. We have disbanded it, and we have actually done several questionings of the population. Do you want an army back? And nobody wants an army. Because, let's think that the purpose of the army was to repress popular democratic feelings, the budget that had been given to the army, my father decided that it would be realigned and redistributed to number one, protecting nature and number two for better education. So today we have a very well educated population that competes with any population in the continent, certainly above the educational level in the United States, which is sadly very poor. And we have a great biodiversity, which is the richness of the country. We are one of the prime eco tourist destinations of the world because of our investment and protection of nature.
You know, Christiana, this is incredibly moving. I do feel we are in the presence of greatness here, just in the invoking of the spirit of your father, Jose Figueres Ferrer. And just in the journey that you have made here as well. I want to invite you to have the last word, and perhaps you could talk about what's your big dream in the next ten years of your life. But before you answer that, you know if you're open to it, can we just honor again, the goodness and greatness of what you've just shared, which is just such a shining and beautiful light about the kind of capacities and possibilities that there are in any or all of us to advance any kind of noble mission transformation at a time when humanity seems to be hurting. But when you hear stories like this, you see possibility. You see what kind of a world we can actually create if we just amplify, replicate and get inspiration from figures like this. So if you're okay with it, we'll just take a quiet moment for about 10 seconds just to enjoy and savor the spirit of this beautiful story you just shared. And then, please break the silence with just your last thought, your big dream for the world and for yourself.
Thank you so much. How beautiful to give some space for that vision of my father. I would say my vision for the next few decades is that we get to the point in understanding ourselves and our role here on this planet so deeply that we will be able to listen to each other with an open heart and open mind and make loving space for each other.
So beautiful. Thank you, Christiana, and Godspeed.
Thank you very much.
.svg)
