Biography

Georgios holds an MA and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, and a Mechanical Engineering degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

He was born in Sparta, Greece.

Georgios has had a distinguished career with the United Nations at the New York headquarters and on field missions, as well as in the think tank / academic world in Greece and beyond (see details below).

He is currently based in Brussels and serving as Executive Director at the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS), which he co-founded in 2013. He is also publisher of Katoikos.world, the online magazine and community-building project of FOGGS.

  • In the period 2000-2010 he worked at UN Headquarters in New York as, among other capacities:
    – Senior Programme Officer in the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team (CCST);
    – Senior Policy Adviser on climate change in the Secretariat of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB);
    – Senior Policy Adviser with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat;
    – First Officer in the Strategic Planning Unit at the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General;
    – Special Assistant to the Under-Secretary-General at the UN Department of Safety and Security;
    – Political Affairs Officer in the UN Department of Political Affairs.
  • From September 2010 to July 2012 he served in the secretariat of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP) as Senior Adviser and Acting Deputy Executive Secretary.
  • He also served on UN field missions in South Africa, Mexico, Haiti and Bosnia & Herzegovina in the period 1994-1996, dealing with civil affairs, elections and human rights.
  • Outside of the United Nations system, he has been an associate during the 1990s of the following institutions in his native Greece:
    Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), where he served in various capacities, including as Head of Publications, Head of Training and Activities, and Coordinator for Research and Training;
    University of Athens, where, among other things, he spearheaded the establishment of a “Master’s Degree in Southeast European Studies”, bringing together ten more Universities from an equal number of Southeast European countries, supported by the European Union’s Royaumont Process.

Since the fall of 2012 Georgios is based in Brussels, where in addition to his FOGGS and Katoikos.world capacities has worked as:

– LIFE Climate Action Sector Coordinator, Central Team, NEEMO EEIG, from November 2015 to August 2019;

Consultant with the United Nations (UNFCCC, UNDP) and the European Commission on global governance, sustainability and climate change, among other issues;

Visiting Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies (BSIS), University of Kent, teaching Global Governance and International Organisations;

Senior Adviser on Global Governance and Sustainability, The Hague Institute for Global Justice (including on climate justice);

Adjunct Program Director, Salzburg Global Seminar (for sustainability governance session, 23-27 June 2013)

Either as a practitioner or as an academic, Georgios Kostakos has been dealing with issues of global governance, global sustainability, climate change, UN system coordination, UN reform and policy planning, political affairs, conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

For a list of publications see Bibliography.

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