Raúl Estrada-Oyuela

Career He was a political journalist and parliamentarian from 1957 until 1966, when he entered the Argentine foreign service. He served as Argentine delegate to several United Nations General Assemblies beginning in 1968. He has served in Washington, D.C., Vienna, Brasília, and Santiago, and as Argentina's Ambassador to China and Mongolia from October 1994 to December 1997. He retired from active service in November 2008. He has also taught at the Catholic University of Argentina.

Kyoto Protocol

He was elected Chairman of the Negotiating Committee for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in March 1993. Estrada-Oyuela chaired the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol from 1995 to 1997, and successive meetings of the UNFCCC from 1991 to 2001. He intentionally shortened the length of the conference, as he believed that the more time delegates had to discuss, the less likely they were to reach a decision. He also allowed himself to rest on the final night while representatives continued to negotiate throughout the night. In an interview with Daniel Hurst of the Lowy Institute, Estrada-Oyuela said that "To negotiate - and much more - to conduct the negotiation, you have to be very relaxed and awake", and that on the final night of the conference "I went to my hotel, just in front of the conference building, and I had dinner with my wife, and I slept for three hours while the delegates were fighting about the points. Then I returned fresh, and they were tired". Another official later described the conference as "negotiation by exhaustion". On 11 December, Estrada-Oyuela announced that the protocol would pass by unanimous agreement. David Sandalow, an assistant U.S. Secretary of State who helped negotiate the Kyoto agreement, described Estrada-Oyuela as "a grandmaster of diplomacy and the godfather of Kyoto" which he said could not have happened without Estrada-Oyuela's leadership. In 2004, Estrada-Oyuela headed the Argentine delegation to COP-10.

Personal life He is the widower of Leticia Vigil Zavala. He has 8 children, 17 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.