In the face of climate change, reflect! A plea from one of the leaders of the Paris Agreement

Then at the head of the UN Climate agency, this native of Costa Rica played a key role in 2015 in the development of the historic agreement concluded in the French capital, where the international community committed to taking measures to limit warming.

Ten years later, last week she was in the Amazonian city of Belem, Brazil, for COP30, where negotiations are in full swing to try to reach a new consensus in the face of the climate emergency.

In an interview with AFP, Christiana Figueres advocates "personal resilience" in the face of the "unprecedented" circumstances that humanity is going through.

In this capacity, she organizes meditation retreats attended by, among others, negotiators from UN climate conferences, to learn breathing techniques to reduce stress.

QUESTION: What is the relationship between meditation and climate change?

ANSWER : "Over the years, we have seen that measures to address climate change have not been adequate, nor have they been implemented at the desired speed or scale, according to scientists.

Many people, especially young people working on this issue, have begun to feel increasingly anxious. It saddens me greatly to see that many young people have decided not to have children, for example, because they don't want to see them living on a planet in this state.

Many people who have dedicated themselves to this subject for years feel that their impact has been minimal or insignificant, and fall into an abyss of despair and frustration. This harms their mental health.

Meditation helps to strengthen personal resilience. And I am convinced that, although we are all working towards planetary resilience, it is very difficult to do so without this personal resilience.

Q: And for you personally, how important has meditation been in your fight against climate change?

A: "I don't know if I could have endured working in this field all these decades without meditation, without connecting with nature, with other people. I wouldn't have been able to cope for so long, and with so much effort."

Q: Is this practice being adopted by the negotiators at COP30?

A: "We have organised retreats with 800 people around the world. Among them are negotiators or their staff, who learn these (meditation) techniques and put them into practice at the COP.

But we can't say that we're going to design the daily COP program around that. It's a personal decision for each individual."

Q: How might this facilitate negotiations?

A: "This makes things easier for them in the sense that, when you learn to listen, you become a better negotiator."

Q: What do you expect from COP30?

A: "I think what will emerge from this COP is that we will realize that, although the political aspect remains important, the economic reality in the face of climate change is becoming increasingly significant.

It's the realization that all these (clean) technologies are simply superior and highly competitive compared to polluting technologies. And this progress in these technologies is visible in all sectors, in all countries. It's progress that won't stop.