“It is time to impose a new defeat on the deniers,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday, which is being held in the Amazonian city of Belém. In his speech before the plenary session of this international conference, the president pointed directly to misinformation and the algorithms of social networks that spread hoaxes against scientific evidence at a time when . This Wednesday a dozen countries have joined together in an alliance against and that has been installed in many centers of power.
Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay have signed a declaration, also sponsored by the UN and UNESCO, in which they show their concern about “the growing impact of disinformation, misinformation, denialism, deliberate attacks against environmental journalists, advocates, scientists, researchers and other public voices, and other tactics used to undermine the integrity of information on climate change.” They warn that these practices “decrease public understanding, delay urgent action, and threaten the global climate response and social stability.”
The signatories commit to financing projects that counteract these practices – Brazil has already contributed one million dollars to this initiative – and to “promote informed and inclusive climate action” with “equitable access to accurate, coherent, evidence-based and understandable information on climate change.” Also, to ask technology companies to “evaluate” whether their algorithm design contributes “to undermining the integrity of the climate information ecosystem.” In addition, they call on the private sector in general to guarantee “transparent and responsible advertising practices with human rights that reinforce the integrity of information on climate change and support reliable information and journalism.”
This declaration, which is open to more countries joining, is the result of the . As a result of this project, a special fund was launched in June to finance initiatives that have received 447 proposals from almost 100 countries. This Wednesday’s declaration urges all nations to join in contributing to that fund. “Growing threats to information integrity represent one of the defining challenges of our time, weakening the foundations of public debate and public trust and undermining the ability of societies to build collective solutions,” the statement summarizes.
Precisely this Wednesday the organization ClientEarth, focused on using law as a form of environmental struggle, presented at the climate summit that is in line with the declaration signed by those ten countries. The study warns that “platforms prioritize, amplify and incentivize climate disinformation.” This means that they are failing to comply, for example, with the “EU Digital Services Law obligations”.
“Climate disinformation is being used to obstruct climate action,” ClientEarth also warns, targeting fossil fuel companies and companies linked to them for their use of “sophisticated tactics to undermine decades of work to build consensus and drive action at international, national and local levels.” Added to them are “other actors” who “simply seek to benefit from the economy of indignation.” “In the short term, disinformation and misinformation about the climate puts citizens facing the impacts of extreme weather caused or exacerbated by climate change at risk,” notes this organization. “In the long term, they erode public trust and political will to take urgently needed actions to prevent the worst impacts of climate change,” the study concludes.
