When Yvo de Boer applied for the job of executive secretary of the UN's climate bureau, there was little chance he would get the job. His predecessor, Joke Waller-Hunter, who had unexpectedly died, was from the Netherlands too. It is very unusual for the UN to give a top job to the same country twice in a row, and anyway, it was a developing country's turn. But de Boer was simply the best candidate, even after an extra selection round was held.
The climate bureau was created to support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the official name for the treaty that came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It in charge of collecting data on greenhouse gas emissions from all the countries that are party to the treaty. It is also in charge of organising climate conferences, such as the one that started in Copenhagen on Monday. For that reason De Boer has been known to refer to himself as a "butler".
Loftier purpose
It is false modesty. Already during his job interview, De Boer told then UN secretary-general Kofi Anan he wasn't interested in the usual job description, which he summed up as "keep your mouth shut and make things work". If that's the job, I'm not your man, he told Annan. The climate bureau had to serve a loftier purpose, De Boer said, and as far as he's concerned there can be no mistake about the purpose: to stop global warming.
After joining the climate bureau in 2006 De Boer became the man behind the scenes: the one who talks to all the parties involved, analyses their positions and is constantly looking for ways to break the impasses, which inevitably come up in the climate change negotiations.
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He is also fond of talking to the media. Former climate negotiator Bert Metz says De Boer's press conferences and interviews are "on, and sometimes over the edge of what is acceptable to the countries". De Boer is not afraid of calling out countries if he feels they are not making enough progress, or to compliment a country when it takes a step in the right direction, often followed by a call on the other countries to do the same.
It was in this role that De Boer came to being referred, not as the 'butler', but as 'climate czar'. Even politicians have come to see him as the chairman of the climate change negotiations.
Yvo de Boer has been involved in the climate debate, at the national, European and now international level, for the past 15 years. It is not a typical career for someone who studied at The Hague's Social Academy with a speciality in probation. It was his knowledge of languages - the result of growing up in a family of diplomats - which landed him in the international department of the Dutch environment ministry. From there it was a small step to Habitat, the UN's human settlement programme with postings in Nairobi and Ottawa.
Leave it to the politicians
In 1994 he returned to the Dutch environment ministry to head the climate change department there. Five years later he was named director of international environmental affairs. He was Dutch environment minister Jan Pronk's right-hand man during the big climate conference in The Hague in 2000. He negotiated international climate treaties on behalf of the Netherlands, and sometimes on behalf of the European Union too.
Until the nineties climate treaties were not big news: there were the domain of experts. Even politicians were hardly interested, says Hugo von Meijenfeldt, the Dutch government climate envoy. "The experts would report a problem and get together. If they came up with a solution they would make it into a treaty. Then they would go to their respective ministers and get them to sign the treaty."|
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Climate change negotiations have changed all that. It is the first environmental issue that politicians have made their own. "You might also say climate negotiations have become more professional," says von Meijenfeldt. Climate was touching on too many policy fields and too much money was involved to leave it to the experts.
Yvo de Boer witnessed and helped shape that transition from political amateurism to professionalism. When he was asked to develop a Dutch climate policy his first job was to get all the departments involved on the same page. It wasn't an easy job. The economics ministry, for instance, still harboured doubts about the validity of climate change. And even if it was real, it was deemed to expensive to do anything about it. The agriculture and transport ministries had other priorities. The foreign ministry wasn't interested. The environment ministry was on board, but it had no budget to bring to the table.
De Boer tackled this divergent visions with Lawrence Susskind 'implementation challenge', which was fashionable at the time. Susskind says the key to negotiations is not to look at the different point of views, but at the underlying interests. These interests, De Boer found, were often quite reasonable. So he set out to look for compromises in which all parties were taken seriously.
Living document
It was this approach that allowed him to get all the Dutch ministries in line and make the 2000 climate conference in The Hague - in UN-speak the Conference of Parties or COP - a success (even if the conference had to be suspended and an agreement was reached only six months later in Bonn.)
The Hague was about implementing the agreements made in Kyoto in 1997. In preparing for the conference De Boer travelled around the world to find out what different countries wanted and why they wanted it. The result was a 'living document' in which all those points of view were represented, and which was in constant change as the negotiating process developed.
After COP6 De Boer really got the taste of negotiating. But the climate change issue was getting old: Kyoto was on track, and everybody leaned back. But De Boer didn't want to time in getting the follow-up negotiations to Kyoto started. It is these negotiations that the Copenhagen conference (COP15) is supposed to finalise.
Once more De Boer travelled around the world to convince the countries of the need to make progress. He was often accompanied by deputy environment minister Pieter van Geel, just to get him in the door. "In the beginning he was often received at the lowest level," says von Meijenfeldt. "After all he was only a civil servant. That's why Van Geel would go with him."
But gradually De Boer's name began to open doors all by itself. These days he gives talks at the White House and negotiates with the Elysée. His biggest asset, says von Meijenfeldt, is his informed passion. "He is an old-fashioned environmental civil servant - in the good sense of the word. He feels passionately about the issues and he will go to extremes to get things done."
According to Leo Meyer, a former colleague of De Boer's at the Dutch environment ministry who now works for the Netherlands' Environmental Assessment Agency, climate negotiators tend to live in a world of their own. "It can be addictive, like playing poker," he said. "Yvo's force is that he was always able to step out of that world. He never looses sight of the underlying goal."
No feelgood ambassador
That is confirmed by De Boer's older brother Jan. "Whenever there was a problem in the family he was always the one to come up with solutions, while all the time staying in the background himself. He is not shy of putting pressure on people, but always without getting involved himself."
It is precisely what some in the climate business reproach him. De Boer is no 'feelgood ambassador' for climate change. He tells how it is. "Persevering, focused and concentrated," in the words of Henriëtte Bersee, who worked with De Boer during COP10 in Buenos Aires in 2004. "He is sharp and he will get what he wants this way or another," says Bert Metz. Countries that have been admonished by De Boer know what he is talking about.
De Boer spent part of his youth at a British boarding school, and some of that has stuck. "That poker face, the immaculate English, the sonorous voice," says Von Meijenfeldt. "You can't always tell what he's thinking. If you make a joke you'll never get a big laugh from him." Still, he is not without humour. "It's a black kind of humour, which sometimes puts people off."
And he has an emotional side to him. In Bali in 2007, De Boer's first conference as climate chief, China accused of him of manipulating the conference. He had called the plenary session while a minister from the host country Indonesia was still in a meeting in another room. De Boer, his bright tropical shirt sticking out amidst the suits and ties, was dumbfounded. He wanted to respond, but instead his voice broke and he left the room in tears. The next day the British tabloid press dubbed him 'the crying Dutchman', but De Boers's tears were later credited for saving the conference.
Make no mistake: climate policy is not an emotional issue for De Boer. It is first and foremost an intellectual challenge, a problem that touches all levels of policy and whose solution must be found in the economy. He is genuinely concerned about climate change, says his brother Jan, "but it is not an emotional burden to him. He doesn't need therapy."
