Climate Crisis Response Lagging Behind Growing Challenges, Experts Warn

In a landmark gathering that highlighted the urgency of digital governance, global stakeholders recently convened at a UNESCO conference in Pretoria to address the growing crisis of online misinformation and platform accountability. The meeting culminated in the adoption of the Pretoria Declaration, a framework aimed at guiding governments through the complex landscape of digital regulation.

The conference revealed a significant shift in discourse around digital platforms. As one regulator candidly admitted during proceedings, “We are slower than the crisis”—a statement that resonated deeply with attendees from regulatory bodies, academia, civil society, technology companies, and government.

This acknowledgment underscores a new consensus: the debate about whether digital platforms influence democracy has concluded. The focus has now shifted to whether governments, particularly in the Global South, possess adequate resources, speed, and authority to respond effectively to online threats.

Implementation emerged as a central challenge throughout the conference. While principles can be drafted with relative ease, enforcement presents considerably more difficulties. Disinformation spreads within minutes, while regulatory responses often take years to develop and implement—a mismatch that creates significant vulnerabilities.

South Africa’s experience with information disorder during crises—including the July 2021 unrest, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic—has demonstrated how rumors can outpace official communications. This reality has led to regulators being described as “custodians of information resilience,” a role that carries enormous responsibility.

The conference highlighted the organized nature of disinformation, emphasizing that it isn’t merely random noise but rather strategic, coordinated, and often well-funded. Speakers noted that disinformation thrives particularly in information vacuums—when credible information is slow to emerge or absent altogether, when journalism is weakened, or when scientific findings are poorly communicated.

Platform business models came under scrutiny as well. The advertising-driven revenue structure that rewards engagement often makes outrage profitable and incentivizes polarization. Multiple speakers referenced the “weaponization of distribution,” arguing that the architecture of content amplification matters as much as the content itself.

For African nations, access to platform data emerged as a critical concern. Without such access, regulators cannot properly assess harm, researchers cannot study manipulation patterns, and civil society cannot build evidence-based cases. This leads to reactive rather than informed policymaking.

The conference acknowledged that most research into platform harms originates from the Global North. If data remains concentrated there, resultant regulations will inevitably reflect Northern realities rather than African contexts. Discussions included the possibility of developing an African instrument on data access—not as a symbolic gesture, but as a structural necessity for effective governance.

Artificial intelligence dominated many panel discussions, with participants challenging the false dichotomy between innovation and safety. AI’s role in content moderation raised particular concerns, as many systems are trained predominantly on English-language datasets, potentially missing cultural nuances in African languages and political contexts that don’t fit Western categorizations.

Child protection was repeatedly emphasized, covering age verification, exposure to harmful content, and the psychological effects of algorithmic design. However, speakers also warned against using regulation as a pretext for repression, noting that internet shutdowns—justified in some countries as tools against misinformation—have occurred dozens of times across the continent in the past year alone.

Climate misinformation discussions yielded another notable insight: scientific knowledge should not be treated as debatable opinion. However, translating scientific data into accessible media narratives remains challenging, creating exploitable gaps in public understanding.

The Pretoria Declaration emphasizes cooperation—between states, regulators and platforms, and researchers across continents. However, participants recognized that cooperation is never neutral but shaped by power dynamics. The Global South has historically been the recipient of digital governance norms designed elsewhere, a pattern that attendees clearly indicated cannot continue.

Digital governance has evolved from an abstract human rights discussion into a concrete matter of power: who controls distribution, who accesses data, who designs business models, and who establishes regulatory guardrails.

As the conference concluded, it became evident that while the Pretoria Declaration marks an important step, the true test will be whether governments, platforms, and regulators can act with sufficient speed and transparency to match the rapidly evolving digital landscape—and whether Africa will help write the rules of digital governance rather than simply live with frameworks designed elsewhere.