ActNowFilm: Mary and Mariana – Global Governance
Find out about President Mary Robinson and Mariana Gomes, participants in ActNowFilm: Youth Climate Leaders as Agents of Change
President Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson is a founding member of The Elders and was Chair 2018-2024. She is also the co-founder of Project Dandelion, a women-led climate justice movement. She is a globally recognised voice on climate change and frequently highlights the need for drastic action from world leaders.
Mary was the first woman President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997 as a transformative leader who fought for equality. She was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. Between 2013 and 2016, she served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy in three roles; first for the Great Lakes region of Africa, then on Climate Change, and then as Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate until the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.
Mary led the Mary Robinson Foundation from 2010 until its planned closure in 2019. She was appointed Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice at Trinity College Dublin in 2019.

Mariana Gomes
An activist since 2017, Mariana Gomes holds a degree in Law and is the President and Founder of Último Recurso, the first climate litigation NGO in Portugal. She studied climate change and leadership in the United States with a Fulbright scholarship and focused on Environmental Law and Energy at Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Brazil. She is currently pursuing a Postgraduate degree in Environmental Law, Urbanism and Land Use Planning.
She has advised the UN on critical minerals, represents Portugal in international climate negotiations and is an Ambassador for the European Climate Pact. An advisor to the President of the Portuguese Republic through the think-tank The Future Has Already Begun, she was named one of the 20 most influential young people in the country, following her selection in 2022 as one of Europe’s 20 Young Leaders by the US State Department. She leads the lawsuit against the Portuguese state for non-compliance with the National Climate Law.

Find out more about the participants in this year's ActNowFilm
ActNowFilm participants 2024