Georgios Kostakos is co-founder and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) ), which focuses on the need for a new globalization narrative, the establishment of a Global Resilience Council, rethinking education for the digital era, supporting SDG implementation, and studying the use of military forces for non-military duties related to disaster management. He has more than thirty years of work experience in international affairs, both as a practitioner and as a researcher.
This includes fourteen years with the United Nations, with assignments such as observing the elections that ended apartheid in South Africa (1994), promoting human rights in Haiti (1995), reporting from post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996), serving as Assistant Secretary of the UN General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (2000-2003), promoting UN strategic planning and reform as First Officer in UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Strategic Planning Unit (2003-2006), co-organizing the first ever high-level event on climate change in New York (2007), advancing the UN system delivering as one on climate change from the Secretariat of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB, 2008-2009), laying the ground for the Sustainable Development Goals and sustainability governance as Senior Adviser and Acting Deputy Executive Secretary of the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP, 2010-2012) established by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, working with the UNFCCC Secretariat in support of the negotiations that resulted in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP21, 2015).
In 2016-2019 Georgios was Climate Action Thematic Coordinator at NEEMO EEIG, where he coordinated the monitoring of climate change adaptation and mitigation projects co-financed by the European Union’s LIFE Programme. In the 1990s he had held numerous senior positions at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and had organised postgraduate courses in international affairs at the University of Athens. More recently he has taught Global Governance and International Organisations to postgraduate students at the Brussels School of International Studies, University of Kent (2014-2016). Georgios holds MA and PhD degrees in International Relations (Kent, UK), as well as an advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering (NTUA, Greece)
