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Witness History

The Paris climate agreement

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On 12 December 2015, nearly 200 countries adopted the Paris climate agreement. It legally committed countries to climate action plans, designed to stop global temperatures rising 2C above pre-industrial levels. Those commitments have influenced government policy and people's lives ever since.

Christiana Figueres was head of climate negotiations at the conference. She speaks to Ben Henderson about the drama behind the scenes, including bomb threats and a last-minute change that nearly derailed the entire agreement.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Christiana Figueres celebrates after the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement. Credit: Francois Guillot/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:10.4

Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Ben Henderson.

0:18.0

Today, I'm taking you back 10 years to the Paris Climate Agreement

0:22.2

when 193 countries and the European Union committed to tackle climate change.

0:28.5

But at the last minute, one small tweak to the text nearly derailed the whole thing.

0:34.1

All hell broke those.

0:36.3

I went to talk immediately to China and I said, look, here's the deal.

0:41.6

I made the mistake. I assumed the responsibility. So he picks up the tax and he goes, oh my God.

0:48.3

This is Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres. She was head of climate negotiations at the conference. For her, it was the

0:56.1

culmination of a lifetime of environmentalism inspired by her father when she was a child.

1:02.9

One of the places that he took us to was to one of these amazing national parks in Costa Rica,

1:10.1

the Monte Verde Reserve. and there I saw a golden

1:14.1

toad, and I just totally fell in love with that species, because at night they look like

1:20.0

little golden coins jumping through the forest. That's where I really clinched my love for nature. And my sad story is that by the time

1:31.9

I wanted to take my daughters, I discovered that that toad had gone extinct. And I learned that it

1:38.8

was the first species that went extinct because of climate change. It was at that point that I decided to dedicate my life

1:48.2

to ensuring that my children, but also children of everyone else,

1:54.0

could enjoy a planet that was as rich in the wonders of biodiversity

1:58.0

as the one that I had been born into.

2:01.1

Christina's passion led her to represent her country, Costa Rica, on climate policy.

2:06.0

But it wasn't smooth sailing.

2:08.0

In 2009, a United Nations conference in Copenhagen ended in failure,

...

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