Understanding Disinformation and Its Impact on Environmental Policy

False or misleading information deliberately created to deceive is increasingly recognized as a major obstacle to addressing pressing environmental challenges. Disinformation campaigns targeting environmental policies have become sophisticated, widespread, and deeply damaging to global efforts to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Unlike misinformation, which involves inaccurate information shared without malicious intent, disinformation is characterized by deliberate deception designed to cause harm. The distinction is crucial—while both can hamper public understanding, disinformation represents a calculated strategy to undermine science and delay action.

“Disinformation undermines public understanding of complex scientific issues, weakens trust in institutions, and delays collective action on urgent global challenges,” explains a recent United Nations assessment. “These dynamics have direct implications not only for environmental governance but also for the enjoyment of human rights, including access to information and participation in public affairs.”

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has identified misinformation and disinformation among the most significant risks worldwide, both currently and in the long term. The report highlights how disinformation contributes to societal polarization, erodes trust in institutions, and complicates policy responses to global threats.

Disinformation Across Environmental Issues

Environmental disinformation takes different forms across various ecological challenges:

In climate policy, disinformation campaigns employ several tactics: outright climate denial (claiming climate change isn’t happening), climate delay tactics (acknowledging the problem but arguing solutions are too costly or disruptive), greenwashing (using misleading environmental claims without substantive action), and conspiracy narratives that frame climate policies as hidden political agendas.

The fossil fuel industry has been particularly active in this realm. Extensive research has documented how companies have funded campaigns intended to create doubt about climate science and impacts, protecting their profits by delaying regulation and policy action.

Biodiversity disinformation includes what researchers term “extinction denialism,” which downplays the severity of species loss or frames it as a purely historical problem. Another emerging concern is AI-generated images of wild animals, which can distort public perception of wildlife, potentially creating the false impression that endangered species are more abundant than they actually are.

In the toxics and pollution context, industry tactics include “ghost-writing” studies that obscure connections between authors and industry interests, manipulating research findings, deliberately misinterpreting data, and suppressing information about harmful chemicals and waste.

Impact on Governance and Human Rights

The impact of environmental disinformation extends far beyond muddying public debate. By distorting understanding of environmental risks and solutions, disinformation fundamentally undermines evidence-based decision-making and complicates global responses to ecological crises.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has emphasized that “rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent.”

Several UN Special Rapporteurs have highlighted how disinformation threatens human rights. Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, found that responses by states and companies to disinformation have often been “problematic, inadequate and detrimental to human rights.” The Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, has called for stronger measures, including addressing misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry.

Global Initiatives to Combat Environmental Disinformation

In response to these threats, a growing number of international initiatives are working to strengthen information integrity in environmental contexts.

The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, launched in 2024 by Brazil, the United Nations, and UNESCO, brings together countries, international organizations, and civil society to tackle climate disinformation. The initiative includes a fund that finances research, strategic communications, and investigative journalism projects addressing climate misinformation.

The Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, endorsed by numerous countries including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, and the European Union, establishes a framework for safeguarding climate information integrity. It recognizes that access to accurate, reliable information is essential for effective climate action and public trust.

Other significant initiatives include Verified for Climate, a UN-Purpose partnership that promotes science-based climate information; the Forum on Information and Democracy, which works to uphold democratic principles in the information space; and Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global coalition of over 90 organizations demanding coordinated strategies against climate disinformation.

International Geneva’s Role

Geneva serves as a hub for addressing environmental disinformation through its concentration of international organizations, academic institutions, and civil society groups. The Aarhus Convention, hosted by UNECE, empowers people with rights to access environmental information and participate in decision-making. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights addresses disinformation through a human rights lens, while organizations like UNDP, UNESCO, WHO, and WMO contribute expertise on information integrity in their respective domains.

Academic institutions in Geneva conduct important research on the dynamics of environmental disinformation. The University of Geneva examines why climate disinformation persists despite strong scientific consensus, while the Geneva Graduate Institute has highlighted Geneva’s potential to become “the global governance hub on combating disinformation.”

As the challenge of environmental disinformation grows, these global initiatives and Geneva-based efforts represent critical steps toward protecting the integrity of environmental information, strengthening evidence-based policymaking, and ensuring that public debates about our planetary future are grounded in facts rather than deception.