Christiana Figueres, a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement, says meditation has helped sustain her decades-long work in climate diplomacy. At COP30 in Belém she highlighted the need for "personal resilience" as a complement to efforts for planetary resilience. Figueres runs meditation retreats — attended by roughly 800 people worldwide, including some negotiators — teaching breathing and listening techniques that can reduce stress and improve negotiation. She also expects COP30 to highlight the growing economic momentum behind clean technologies.
COP30: Figueres Urges Meditation to Combat Climate Anxiety and Strengthen Negotiations
Christiana Figueres, a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement, says meditation has helped sustain her decades-long work in climate diplomacy. At COP30 in Belém she highlighted the need for "personal resilience" as a complement to efforts for planetary resilience. Figueres runs meditation retreats — attended by roughly 800 people worldwide, including some negotiators — teaching breathing and listening techniques that can reduce stress and improve negotiation. She also expects COP30 to highlight the growing economic momentum behind clean technologies.
01:09 AM, 11/20/2025Environment
Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who helped design the 2015 Paris Agreement, says meditation has been essential to sustaining her long career in climate diplomacy. As head of the UN climate agency in 2015, she played a central role in crafting the accord that set the goal of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre‑industrial levels while striving for 1.5°C.
Now at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Figueres is emphasizing the need for what she calls "personal resilience" as negotiators contend with an accelerating climate emergency. To help build that resilience, she organizes meditation retreats where participants — including some negotiators — learn breathing techniques and other practices to reduce stress and remain effective under pressure.
Q: What's the link between meditation and climate change?
Over the years, measures to tackle climate change have fallen short of scientists' calls in both speed and scale. That shortfall has left many people, especially young activists, feeling anxious or despairing about the future — some even deciding against having children because of how they view the planet's prospects. Longtime advocates can also feel their impact is insignificant, which harms mental health. Meditation, I believe, helps strengthen personal resilience; planetary resilience is difficult without it.
Q: How important has meditation been for you in trying to fight climate change?
I don't know if I could have endured working in this field over these decades without meditation, without connecting to nature and to other people. I don't think I could have kept going for so long.
Q: Has this practice resonated with COP30 negotiators?
We have run retreats attended by around 800 people worldwide. A number of negotiators and their colleagues have taken up these tools and bring them to the COPs. That said, meditation remains a personal choice and cannot be built into the official daily COP schedule.
Q: Does it facilitate negotiations?
Yes. When you learn to listen — a skill fostered by meditation — you become a better negotiator.
Q: What do you expect from COP30?
I expect the COP will underscore that, while politics remains critical, economic realities are increasingly decisive. Clean technologies are becoming demonstrably superior and more competitive than polluting alternatives, and that technological progress is evident across sectors and countries. That momentum, she says, is unlikely to stop.
Figueres' message links individual wellbeing with collective action: strengthening negotiators' mental resilience may help sustain the long-term work needed to achieve meaningful climate progress.