UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has named Costa Rica's Christiana Figueres to be the organization's top official on climate change, his spokesman announced Monday. UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said the 53-year-old Costa Rican, currently San Jose's climate change negotiator, would succeed Yvo de Boer of the Netherlands as the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). De Boer tendered his resignation after last year's failed Copenhagen climate change talks. Figueres is to assume her post on July 1, five months before the next round of scheduled climate change talks in the Mexican resort city of Cancun. Her father Jose Figueres Ferrer was a three-time president of Costa Rica. 