"Christiana Figueres, the UN official who helped steer the Paris climate change accord to success in December, has entered the race to succeed Ban Ki-moon as the organisation’s next secretary-general.

Ms Figueres, daughter of a three-time Costa Rican president, joins a large field of contenders for a post tipped to go to a woman for the first time in the UN’s 71-year history.

A colourful diplomat known for speaking her mind, she vowed to deliver a new model of “collaborative diplomacy” and the organisational reform that has been a hallmark of her time running the UN’s climate change secretariat in Bonn over the past six years."

Pilita Clark reports for the Financial Times July 7, 2016. [2]