Well-financed and coordinated disinformation campaigns by, for example, the fossil fuel industry, spread doubt about the existence of climate change. Photo: File
Last year was the world’s warmest on record, leaving no uncertainty that we are feeling the effects of climate change worldwide. Yet, persistent doubts about its existence continue to undermine the effectiveness of policy measures aimed at reducing humanity’s impact on the climate.
These doubts do not spread organically based on citizens’ concerns, but are pushed by well-financed and coordinated disinformation campaigns. Global research on climate change disinformation confirms that this is a lucrative business. Challenges to information integrity are affecting climate change policies, as argued in the Forum on Information & Democracy’s policy brief, “Information integrity on climate change must be an integral pillar of the G20” published in the framework of the M20, an independent media initiative.
These issues are three-fold: coordinated, financed and targeted climate disinformation, orchestrated by vested interests, for example, the fossil fuel industry, that directly benefits from delaying climate action, spreads doubt about the existence of climate change or the effectiveness of certain measures. The campaigns exploit a polarised issue and target policy makers with the objective of hindering action. The attention-focused business model of online platforms facilitates their work and brings profits to platforms.
Second, attacks against journalists and the crisis of news media are further hampering access to reliable environmental information and investigative reporting on climate scandals. In the past 15 years, 44 environmental journalists around the world were killed and many more were victims of attacks and intimidation, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco’s) statistics.
Natural resource extraction occurs to a great extent in countries with little press freedom, making investigations even more difficult. A worldwide economic crisis of the media exacerbates these problems. According to Reporters without Borders, the economic situation of journalism is at an unprecedented low, leading to the firing of journalists, closures and news deserts.
Finally, the media and science suffer from a lack of trust. Only 40% state that they trust the news media, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025. And the distrusting minorities are managing to pollute the public discourse, spreading their doubts in science.
The climate crisis cannot be solved unless we solve the information integrity crisis. As long as the global information space is polluted with false information and doubts, and provides only challenging avenues for reliable climate reporting, it will be difficult to take the needed actions: both citizens and policy-makers will be impacted.
The G20 has started recognising the importance of the issue, notably during Brazil’s G20 presidency in 2024. The Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change launched by the government of Brazil, the UN and Unesco aims to contribute to research, communication campaigns and coordinated actions. The South African presidency should follow in these footsteps and encourage all related negotiation groups to recognise the issue and commit to taking action. Their priorities — solidarity, equality, sustainability — cannot be achieved without addressing the global information space and its harmful effect on public debate.
In particular, the Sherpa Tracks Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group and Just Energy Transitions Workstream are well-positioned to discuss the issues and make information integrity an integral part of policy debates on climate and the environment.
G20 actions must investigate and develop solutions to assess the risk of climate and environmental disinformation on policy-making and the policy debate. Particularly in Global South countries, research is insufficient.
The G20 should also look into solutions to co-regulate and regulate the digital space, ensuring that platforms’ business models do not continue to exacerbate the crisis but contribute to a healthy public debate based on access to reliable information.
Moreover, the G20 must address the attacks against environmental journalists and the sustainability crisis of the news media, providing solutions to protect journalists and journalism in the long run.
Finally, debates need to consider how to strengthen access to and trust in reliable information on environmental and climate issues.
We therefore recommend that the G20 Heads of States’ Declaration includes the following statement in their final declaration:
“We recognise the importance of access to reliable, independent and pluralistic information sources on climate change and environmental issues and will bolster our efforts to ensure the safety of environmental journalists, access to scientific and fact-based information online and to address the root causes of climate disinformation and climate change denialism.”
The G20 Summit in South Africa could be an important moment to further the protection of information integrity on climate issues. But efforts need to go beyond the G20. Information integrity needs to become an integral part of all climate negotiations, starting with the forthcoming COP30. Only by addressing the information integrity crisis can we establish a global information ecosystem that contributes to a fact-based and healthy debate on climate policy.
Katharina Zuegel is the policy director at the Forum on Information & Democracy, and lead author of the M20’s third policy brief. The M20 is an independent parallel media initiative to ensure issues relating to media integrity and healthy ecosystems are reflected in the policy agenda of the G20.