Dan David Prize announces award for climate change fighter
Christiana Figueres, winner of one-million dollar award, is a Costa Rican diplomat who was influential in forming the Paris Agreement of 2015 on climate change.
By ZACK EVANSChristiana Figueres(photo credit: JULIEN PAQUIN)
The Dan David Prize announced Christiana Figueres as winner of their one million dollar award, in honor of Figueres' achievements combating climate change.The Prize is named after the late Dan David, a businessman and philanthropist, and is endowed by the Dan David Foundation at Tel Aviv University.According to its website, "The Dan David Prize recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy, and progress and to promote the scientific, technological and humanistic achievements that advance and improve our world."Figueres said that "It is with utter surprise and deep gratitude that I join an illustrious group of Dan David Prize laureates doing committed work to better understand the lessons of our past, to enrich the experience of our present, and to more intentionally shape our future.”Figueres was the Executive Secretary for the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-2016. She influenced the formation of the Paris Agreement of 2015, created to combat climate change and signed by 195 nations. Originally from Costa Rica, she is also the founder of the Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas.Figueres will take part in the Dan David Prize Award Ceremony in May 2019 along with other recipients of this year's Prize, including author Michael Ignatieff and the organization Reporters Without Borders."I am particularly delighted that the Dan David Prize is headquartered at the Tel Aviv University in Israel, a country whose history is so interwoven with the history of my own country," she said.The Prize is one of the highest-value awards in the world.
