José María Figueres


José María Figueres Olsen is a Costa Rican businessman and politician. After he left the presidency of Costa Rica in 1998, Figueres has also been involved in global issues such as climate change, sustainable development, and technology. He started his career as an engineer working in agribusiness. After a decade, he entered public service as Minister of Foreign Trade and then Minister of Agriculture. In 1994, he was elected President of Costa Rica, as the nation's youngest elected president of the 20th century. In 2000, he joined the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, and later he worked with Concordia 21 in Madrid. Since 2010, he has been Chairman of the Carbon War Room, an independent non-profit organization focused on the global transition to a low-carbon economy. On 27 March 2012, Sir Richard Branson announced that he was appointed as the new President of the Carbon War Room.

Biography

José María Figueres is the son of José Figueres Ferrer, who was a three-time President of Costa Rica. His mother, Karen Olsen Beck, an American social worker born to Danish immigrant parents, later adopted Costa Rican nationality. After serving as First Lady, she was appointed Ambassador to Israel in 1982. In 1990, she was elected Member of Congress for the 1990–1994 legislature.
Figueres grew up in La Lucha, a farm community his father Don Pepe founded in 1928. There José María attended the public school Cecilia Orlich Figueres, before going on to study at the Colegio Humboldt and later at the Lincoln High School, both in San José.
Figueres has three younger siblings, Christiana Figueres, Mariano and Kirsten. Christiana Figueres was Executive Director of the UNFCCC, responsible for international climate change negotiations. From the first marriage of his father, Figueres has an older brother, Marti, and a sister, Muni. Muni Figueres has held various public positions, and since 2010 she has served as the Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States.
José María has two children from his first marriage to former First Lady Josette Altmann Borbón, José María and Eugenia. The marriage between Figueres and Altmann ended in divorce. He is currently married to Cinthya Berrocal Quirós.

Education

Figueres completed his undergraduate studies at the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in the Class of 1979 with a major in Engineering. While attending West Point, he attended and completed the U.S. Army's Ranger Training Course in 1975. He was awarded the Army Ranger tab and was the class Distinguished Honor Graduate.
Later, he continued his academic studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, graduating in 1991 with a master's degree in Public Administration. During his studies at Harvard, Figueres also attended courses at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

Business career

Upon returning to Costa Rica after concluding his studies at West Point, he joined and later led the restructuring process of the deeply indebted family business, Sociedad Agroindustrial San Cristobal . Figueres helped return the business to profitability by disposing of non-productive assets, reducing leverage, improving the efficiency of many industrial processes, and focusing on expanding exports.
Years later, in 1990, Figueres co-founded Energía Global Inc. a renewable energy company with operations in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Chile. The business was later sold and today it continues to operate as a subsidiary of ENEL, Italy's largest power company.
In 1999, Figueres joined the Board of Directors of Terremark Worldwide Inc., on which he served for five years. He then continued to be closely associated with the company in its international expansion projects. Terremark is involved in transforming and securing enterprise-class IT on a global scale, providing industry managed services, cloud computing, colocation and web hosting solutions for enterprise IT infrastructures from their data centers. In 2011, Terremark was acquired by Verizon.
In 2005, Figueres undertook a one-year assignment as Managing Director of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization, responsible for refocusing global consulting within the group. This group is the largest Arab group of professional services firms, headquartered in Amman, Jordan, with over 73 offices in 23 countries. From 2006 to 2009, Figueres served on the International Advisory Board of Abraaj Capital, the largest Middle East Private Equity firm with over $6 billion of assets under management. In 2009, he joined the Advisory Board of Grupo Arcano, an independent financial services firm based in Madrid, Spain. The group is a leading boutique in investment banking and asset management services.
In 2010, Figueres joined IJ Partners in Geneva, Switzerland, as a Managing Partner. IJ Partners was founded in 2009 during the global economic crisis, to provide financial services to private individuals and family offices investing exclusively in tangible assets.
Figueres serves on the board of the Rocky Mountain Institute, including as Chair until 2017.

Political career

In 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laurate and President Óscar Arias, appointed Figueres to overhaul the ailing National Railway System, INCOFER. He was then appointed Minister in the Arias government, first of Foreign Trade and later of Agriculture. Upon the completion of the governmental period Figueres continued his academic studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, graduating in 1991 with a master's degree in Public Administration.
Following his graduate studies at Harvard, Figueres returned to Costa Rica and declared his intention to seek the nomination of the political party he belonged to, Partido Liberación Nacional. After a heated and much-disputed primary election process involving five candidates, Figueres won the party's nomination in 1993 and went on to the national election that he won in February 1994. José María Figueres Olsen was elected President of Costa Rica for four years at the age of 39, the nation's youngest elected president in the 20th century.

Presidency

According to Leonardo Garnier, minister of Planning and Economic Policy during the Figueres' administration, the latter promoted Sustainable Development as the integrating architecture of governmental action. This program was anchored on three pillars: Firstly, to transform the Costa Rican economy towards one of higher productivity, with special emphasis on technology. Secondly, for the Costa Rican society to express greater solidarity by opening opportunities of wellbeing for all. Thirdly, for society to develop itself in harmony with nature . The administration is credited with having worked to advance and promote further integration of Costa Rica into the globalised economy.

Government achievements

Figueres reformed and reorganized many public institutions including the closing of some of them, such as Banco Anglo Costarricense and the National Railway System which after being re-organized several times was again insolvent. The latter decision was reversed by the following administrations, which actually invested in modernizing the railway, with apparent success . The Figueres Administration contributed to the establishment of Intel Corporation in Costa Rica.
His administration also launched several initiatives to improve national education, including a constitutional reform approved by Congress to dedicate 6% of GDP towards public education ; introduced English as a second language in public schools from the first grade up; consolidated the installation of computer labs in high schools.
During his term, government created the EBAIS as an effective provider of preventive medicine in the communities, primarily by giving easy access to medical services.
He was also an early leader on climate change, putting in place the first price on carbon in the world in Costa Rica in 1995. In 1994, he proposed to the U.S. Government via the U.S. Department of Energy negotiation of a U.S. - Costa Rica bilateral agreement on climate change. This was the first such agreement in the world, was negotiated in 1994 and signed by President Figueres and U.S. Vice President Al Gore in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House on September 30, 1994. From then on, Costa Rica continued to lead on climate change, engaging other nations across the Americas and under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, helping to ensure the success of the Kyoto Protocol and since. Jose Maria's sister, Christiana Figures, played a leading role, advising President Figueres, negotiating the agreement with the U.S., and engaging other nations, eventually becoming Costa Rica's representative in the global climate treaty negotiations, and then the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Criticisms of government work

President Figueres' Government was controversial to some. The most common criticisms were:

Chemise case

In 1991, when Figueres was seen as a possible contender for the presidency, brothers David and José Romero published a book accusing Figueres of having participated in the extrajudicial execution of a drug dealer named Jose Joaquin Orozco, known as "Chemise". The basis for this allegation dated back to March 7, 1973. Figueres accused the Romero brothers of libel and in 1993 a court acquitted them while condemning their main source, former drug-enforcement officer Walter Campos. In 1998 another court sentenced the Romero brothers to seven years' imprisonment for making a false accusation, but that sentence was appealed and revoked due to procedural issues. In 2000, two years after Figueres left office, the legal proceeding ended with a settlement between the Romero brothers and Figueres's lawyers.

Religion

In the middle of Figueres' presidential campaign, anonymous allegations arguing Figueres was not Catholic were widely spread and picked up by the media. Costa Rica's political constitution establishes the Catholic faith as the official State religion . To dispel the strong rumors Monsenor Román Arrieta, Archbishop of San José and President of the Episcopal Conference was obliged to pronounce himself acknowledging José María Figueres had been baptized a Roman Catholic.

Alcatel

In 2004, Costa Rica's Attorney General opened official investigations against two other former presidents, for alleged financial misconduct. Both were placed under arrest. Shortly afterwards local media reports claimed Figueres had also received payments from Alcatel. It was reported that Figueres had earned nearly US$900 thousand for three years of consultancy work on telecommunications with Alcatel initiated two years after his presidency, and while already working in Europe. Figueres disclosed all his financial affairs and requested the Costa Rican Internal Revenue Service to review his tax returns. Following this review, Figueres amended his tax filings to include income earned outside of Costa Rica, which is not subject to Costa Rican tax, and paid 67.2 million Costa Rican colones in taxes. On 5 December 2005 the Internal Revenue Service of Costa Rica notified Figueres of no financial misconduct with resolution number 5452000009594 dated 27 October 2005.
A Congressional Commission took it upon themselves to investigate the allegations. The Commission of Control of Public Revenue and Expenditure summoned Figueres. On 6 September 2005, Judge Maria Morales of the First Circuit Court of Costa Rica pronounced a ruling in Figueres' favour, and against the Congressional Commission's procedures. The Commission also failed to register a report on the findings before the Congress, as stipulated in Congressional Procedural Regulations.
Figueres was never summoned nor charged by the Attorney General's office . On 19 September 2007, the Attorney General formally announced that there were no grounds on which to press any charges against Figueres. .

Paradise Papers

In November 2017 an investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism cited his name in the list of politicians named in "Paradise Papers" allegations.

International awards

President Figueres has received numerous international awards for his work and adherence to the tenets of Sustainable Development. These include:
Upon leaving government in 1998 President Figueres founded Entebbe – . This organization leads and promoted initiatives and projects with national and international impact that encourage the incorporation and use of modern technologies to improve the quality of life in Latin American societies. The foundation started and developed pioneering programs, such as LINCOS, APVE and CENTAIRE. A large number of academic, social and communal organizations, as well as private sector partners contributed to the development of these programs.
In the same field of deploying technologies to boost development, together with Nicolas Negroponte and Jeffrey Sachs, Figueres founded the "Digital Nations Consortium", a program overseen by the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1999 he was called upon by Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations to chair a working group on Information, Communication, Technology. He was later elected Chairman of the .
While leading the ICT Task Force, in mid-2000 Figueres was appointed Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, and independent international organization dedicated to improving the state of the world by bringing together world leaders to establish alliances that can influence industry, regional and global agendas. Three years later he was appointed the first CEO of the World Economic Forum. His responsibilities included coordinating the prestigious annual meeting of the Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together prominent corporate leaders, heads of State and government, as well as respected personalities from the academic, cultural and religious world. Among his achievements while at the Forum was the strengthening of bonds between the corporate world and governmental and social sectors in order to identify their common long term interests and visions.
Figueres resigned from the World Economic Forum towards the end of 2004, when consulting work with Alcatel appeared in the international media. Andre Schneider, the World Economic Forum's spokesman said that Figueres acknowledged violating the rules of the forum by not declaring that he was being retained as a consultant when he took the post and while he was working at the forum. In his letter of resignation, Figueres apologized to forum founder Klaus Schwab for failing to inform the organization that he had entered the consultancy "many months before joining the Forum." . In March 2005, Figueres joined the Felipe IV Group, in Madrid, Spain as its CEO. This organization supports and collaborates with institutions working in the fields of Development, Dialogue, and Democracy around the world.
At the same time and since having left government in Costa Rica, Figueres has served on numerous other Boards. He was Chairman of LEAD as well as FUNDES Internacional. He has also served as a director of the, World Wildlife Fund, the Botanic Research Institute Texas, the World Resources Institute, and the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Since 2008, Figueres has served as Chairman of the Global Fairness Initiative, taking on the role from its Founding Chairman, President Bill Clinton. He is currently a Board member of FRIDE, the Geneva Earth Council, Population Action International, and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of DARA.
From 2009 until 2011, when its mandate was completed, Figueres served on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Advisory Group on Climate Change and Energy.
In 2010, Figueres joined the Carbon War Room as its first Chairman. The organization was founded by Sir Richard Branson and a group of global entrepreneurs. The Carbon War Room is an independent non-profit focused on finding market based solutions to reduce carbon emissions at the gigaton scale, either by creating new business models or identifying policy reforms.
In the academic field, Figueres serves on the Dean's Alumni Leadership Council at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and he is a fellow of Thunderbird School of Global Management, where he often participates in global business events.
Figueres is a founding member of the Club de Madrid, an independent non-profit organization composed of more than 100 democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers from all over the world. The Club de Madrid's objective is to promote "Democracy that Delivers".