Before joining the UNFCCC, Mr. de Boer was Director for International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment of the Netherlands, responsible for international policy, both in the context of the European Union, as well as broader international cooperation.

He has also served as Deputy Director-General for Environmental Protection in the same Ministry, as Head of the Climate Change Department and has worked in the fields of housing and public information. Early in his career, Mr. de Boer worked for the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT).

Mr. de Boer has been involved in climate change policies since 1994. He has helped to prepare the position of the European Union in the lead-up to the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, assisted in the design of the internal burden sharing of the European Union and has since led delegations to the UNFCCC negotiations.

He has actively sought broad stakeholder involvement on the issue of climate change. To that end, he launched an international dialogue on the clean development mechanism and has partnered international discussions with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, aimed at increasing private sector involvement.

Mr. de Boer has served as Vice-President of the Conference of Parties to UNFCCC and as Vice-Chair of the Commission on Sustainable Development. At the time of appointment, he was a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, the Bureau of the Environment Policy Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Advisory Group of the Community Development Carbon Fund of the World Bank and the Board of Directors of the Centre for Clean Air Policy.

Born in Vienna, Yvo de Boer is married and has 3 children. As the son of a Dutch diplomat, he travelled the world extensively before entering boarding school in the United Kingdom and obtaining a technical degree in social work in the Netherlands.

Mr. de Boer succeeds the late Joke Waller-Hunter, also from the Netherlands. She was appointed to the position in 2002 and died in October 2005 at the age of 58. A special web memorial has been made available. Between October 2005 and September 2006, Richard Kinley led the Climate Change Secretariat as Officer-in-charge.