Countries sign declaration to promote climate change information integrity at COP 30
The climate change conference underway in Brazil has taken a bold step towards addressing climate disinformation and promoting accurate, evidence-based information on climate issues, with the launch of the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change.
The landmark declaration at the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), ongoing at Belem, a city in the Amazon forest, was sealed at the conference, which started on November 11, marking the first time information integrity is prioritised at a UN climate conference.
More than 50,000 delegates, including government delegations, civil society, the media, and climate activists, are attending the global event.
Launched by the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, the initiative establishes coordinated regimes for shared international commitments to address climate disinformation and promote accurate, evidence-based information on climate issues.
Additionally, the declaration emphasises that mobilising all actors in society requires access to consistent, reliable, accurate, and evidence-based information on climate change.
The initiative prioritises access to reliable and accurate climate information as indispensable for raising awareness, fostering public participation, enabling accountability, and building public trust in urgent climate policies and actions.
Signatories to the declaration commit to promoting the integrity of information related to climate change at international, national, and local levels, in line with international human rights law and the principles of the Paris Agreement.
The declaration was drafted in collaboration with civil society members of the Global Initiative Advisory Group and endorsed by ten countries so far - Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay.
Commitments
Under the Declaration, signatories commit to promote the integrity of information related to climate change, in line with international human rights law, including freedom of expression standards; support the sustainability of a diverse and resilient media ecosystem to ensure accurate and reliable coverage on climate and environmental issues; support the inclusion of information integrity commitments into the Action for Climate Empowerment agenda under the UNFCCC; and promote informed and inclusive climate action by advancing equitable access to accurate, evidence-based, understandable information for all.
They also commit to fostering cooperation and capacity-building to address threats to information integrity, safeguarding those reporting on and researching climate issues.
Call to action
The Declaration called on governments, the private sector, civil society, academia and funders to take concrete action to counter the growing impact of disinformation, misinformation, denialism and deliberate attacks on environmental journalists, defenders, scientists and researchers that undermine climate action and threaten societal stability.
Again, the declaration emphasised that mobilising all actors in society required access to consistent, reliable, accurate and evidence-based information on climate change, which was indispensable for raising awareness, fostering public participation, enabling accountability and building public trust in urgent climate policies and actions.
The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stressed that it was important for more countries to sign up to the initiative because climate change was no longer a threat to the future, but that "it is a tragedy of the present."
"We live in an era in which obscurantists reject scientific evidence and attack institutions. It is time to deliver yet another defeat to denialism," he stressed.
He added that all countries needed to work together to fight mis and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing.
The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, indicated that through the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, governments and organisations were to work together to fund research and action, promoting information integrity on climate issues.
"Scientists and researchers should never fear telling the truth," he stressed.
For her part, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said that without access to reliable information about climate disruption, there was no hope of overcoming the global crisis.
"Through this initiative, we will support the journalists and researchers investigating climate issues, sometimes at great risk to themselves, and fight the climate-related disinformation running rampant on social media,” she said.
