UN Launches Global Campaign to Tackle Climate Misinformation at COP30 in Brazil
UN launches initiative to combat climate misinformation at COP30.
At the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, the United Nations has launched a new initiative to confront one of the most dangerous threats to climate progress—disinformation. With populist leaders and fossil fuel lobbies spreading doubts about climate science, the UN and UNESCO have unveiled the Global Initiative on Information Integrity for Climate Change. The program aims to hold social media platforms, corporations, and governments accountable for combating false claims about climate policies and renewable energy.
This comes amid an alarming surge in fake climate content. From July to September 2025, online posts containing misleading or false claims about COP-related issues rose by 267%, with over 14,000 documented cases. Artificial intelligence has further complicated the landscape, generating fabricated videos of disasters and forged statements from international institutions. Experts say the oil and gas industry and its lobby groups have amplified more than 2,400 misleading claims about renewables since last year’s UN summit, spreading the perception that clean energy is unreliable, expensive, and job-killing.
India’s situation encapsulates how misinformation can shape public understanding. Surveys revealed that 57% of Indians mistakenly believe natural gas helps fight climate change, while 41% think electric vehicle batteries cannot be reused. These distortions mix real economic anxieties with misleading narratives, eroding support for climate action. With social media being the main source of climate information, India remains especially vulnerable due to limited public fact-checking systems and polarized online discussions about development and sustainability.
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UN officials have warned that misinformation now poses as great a challenge as carbon emissions to global cooperation. The new initiative calls on countries like India—known for robust renewable energy efforts and transparent emissions tracking—to lead by example in defending factual integrity. Without restoring truth to the center of international dialogue, climate agreements risk losing credibility. As one diplomat at COP30 remarked, “Before the world can act on science, it must first believe it.”
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