ActNowFilm: youth climate leaders in conversation with climate experts is an international youth voices in climate change project, selected to showcase at COP28. The film is based on 1-2-1 conversations between 30 pairs of youth climate leaders and world leading climate experts.
Raina Ivanova is a climate justice activist from Germany who focuses on child rights violations caused by climate change and the social inequalities linked to it. As a part of the Children vs. Climate Crisis petition, alongside Greta Thunberg and 14 other youth, she petitioned five countries including her own to drastically cut down carbon emissions as their contribution to climate change violates child rights. Furthermore, she is a former member of UNICEF Germany’s Youth Council, the founder of her school’s Climate Club and a former member of her state’s student school council. Her first experiences as a climate activist were participating in school strikes organised by Fridays For Future and distributing flyers and stickers to mobilise people to join global climate strikes.
Professor Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research at the Grantham Institute and Professor of Climate Science & Policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. He studies how societies can transform towards more sustainable futures. His interdisciplinary research connects Earth system sciences to the study of societal change and policy. He publishes on the effectiveness of international climate agreements including the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement, carbon budgets, emission pathways in line with 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming, net zero emission targets, and the interaction between climate, sustainable development and climate justice.
As a long-serving lead author on the annual UNEP Emissions Gap and reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joeri is a leading contributor to scientific assessments that inform international climate policy, include the seminal IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. In 2019, he was the youngest member serving on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Science Advisory Group; and since 2022, he serves as one of the fifteen members of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which informs and advises the European Union on its climate action.
He is also active in providing scientific evidence for climate change litigation, for example, in support of Children vs Climate Crisis in which sixteen children from across the world petition the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s leading economic powers accountable for inaction on the climate crisis. (Photo credit: Ivan Boll)