Yvo de Boer was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the new Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC on 10 August 2006 and took up his post on 4 September 2006. The appointment had been endorsed by the Bureau of the Convention.

Mr. de Boer left the United Nations on 1 July 2010 to join international consulting group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability.

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 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's involvement in climate change policies began in 1994. He 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 led delegations to the UNFCCC negotiations.

He 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 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.