Georgios Kostakos

    Georgios Kostakos

      Georgios is a co-founder and the Executive Director of FOGGS, and he serves as Co-Director of the GRC Project. In close collaboration with the other Co-Director, Dr. Harris Gleckman, Georgios provides substantive and managerial leadership to the GRC Project Team in the execution of the project, and carries out high-level contacts with key stakeholders from governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector and other relevant groups. 

      For about half of his thirty-year work experience Georgios has served with the United Nations, including with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability and UNFCCC. He feels privileged to have witnessed the first post-Apartheid elections in South Africa as a UN electoral observer, to have contributed to the transition to a more peaceful Bosnia and Herzegovina as a UN civil affairs officer, to have supported the negotiations for the 2005 World Summit, to have helped organize the first high-level event on climate change in New York, to have been part of the process that led to the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to have supported the negotiations for the Paris Agreement on climate change, among other things. He has also held various positions at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), organized courses at the University of Athens, taught at the Brussels School of International Studies / University of Kent, and served as LIFE Climate Action Sector Coordinator at NEEMO EEIG.  

      Georgios helped give name and shape to the need for a “UN Security Council for non-military threats” that emerged from discussions among in-house and guest practitioners and thinkers that FOGGS held in 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and in view of the apparent inability of the multilateral system to generate anadequate response. He looks forward to – and keeps pushing for – the actual establishment and operation of such a body in the UN system framework in the next couple of years. 

      Georgios is a Mechanical Engineer by training and has a PhD in International Relations, specialising in global governance, climate action and sustainability.

      Join the Conversation

      Sign up to stay in touch and learn more about the Global Governance Forum.

      Stay Up to Date