Monica Araya, founder and executive director of Costa Rica Limpia and former lead climate negotiator for Costa Rica, will speak about the silence on environment and climate issues in recent elections in her country and in other parts of Latin America. She will discuss the pivotal role that citizen action plays in forcing politicians and the media to address environmental and climate issues as part of a broader agenda that challenges the notion of politics as usual.
Monica Araya is a Costa Rican independent adviser on low-emissions development, climate finance, and the politics of climate change. She is a coordinator of the Low Emissions Development Strategies (LEDS) Platform for Latin America and the Caribbean and a member of the Steering Committee of the U.N. Environmental Programme's Gap Emissions Report. Until June 2013, she was a lead negotiator for Costa Rica in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. She worked at E3G from 2009 to 2011 and has worked as external associate on climate finance and climate diplomacy projects.
She collaborates regularly with leaders in government, civil society, and business with a focus on climate action in middle-income economies. She worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Costa Rica, Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Climate Change Capital, and has collaborated with multiple organizations including the World Resources Institute, European Climate Foundation, INCAE Business School, Overseas Development Institute, Climate and Development Knowledge Network, Institute for Building Efficiency, and Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change.
She has authored nearly 50 publications many of which focus on low-carbon policies and politics. She speaks Spanish, English, and Portuguese. Araya has a master's in economic policy from National University in Costa Rica and master's and doctoral degrees in environmental management from Yale University.
