Disinformation as information integrity

Mapping NGO capture of permissible narratives at the United Nations

Photo by Tony Stoddard on Unsplash

By many accounts, the 30th meeting of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Brazil was over before it started. One of the things to make its way out of the gathering was the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change hosted by UNESCO and was signed by a handful of countries.¹

The Declaration received a nod on social media with many mentioning it sent a chilling message. But for the most part it too passed without much attention.

The Declaration deserves a fair showing though for what it represents in the next stage of narrative control in climate change science and advocacy.

If it is true that the world has moved on from climate change- and I think that it is true- then the relentless push for discourse power (to borrow a hotly discussed term from the CCP) is relevant for global affairs.

In fact, COP 30 marketed the focus on disinifrmaton specifically in relation to geopolitics (below). Head of the Climate-KIC, Europe’s largest public-private partnership focused on climate innovation, cites the need for “cognitive security” to confront climate change. Meanwhile, the UN has teamed up with a co-founder of Avaaz to create a global network of youngish Tik-tok influencers to “persuade”, “reach target audiences en masse”, and “encourage global cooperation.”

It’s all weird stuff.

COP30.br

The Declaration is inspired by those,

Concerned by the growing impact of disinformation, misinformation, denialism, deliberate attacks on environmental journalists, defenders, scientists, researchers and other public voices and other tactics used to undermine the integrity of information on climate change, which diminish public understanding, delay urgent action, and threaten the global climate response and societal stability;

The Declaration calls on the private sector and governments to establish policies to promote “information integrity” on climate change.

Let’s be very clear that no matter how well intentioned this may be it is an overt effort to control the permissible narrative around climate change especially as it pertains to policymaking and the courts.

The Declaration is underpinned by the UN Global Principles of Information Integrity and the Declaration was organized by the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, a project of Brazil, the UN, and UNESCO.

Let’s take these in parts.

The Principles of Information Integrity were developed by the UN Department of Global Communications.

The Principles describe information integrity as follows:

Information integrity entails a pluralistic information space that champions human rights, peaceful societies and a sustainable future.

Authors of the Principles intend they be used as the foundation to launch coordinated efforts around shaping information:

Harness the Global Principles to form and actively participate in broad cross-sector coalitions on information integrity, convening diverse expertise and approaches, including for capacity-building, from civil society, academia, media, government and the international private sector, and ensuring full and meaningful youth engagement, such as through dedicated youth advisory groups.

The result is that the experts and preferences of those chosen to lead these coalitions on information integrity become the rulers of strategic global narratives.

In its first Issue Brief on information integrity, the Department of Global Communications points to the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change (GIIICC) as exemplar use of the Principles.

The GIIICC is a project of Brazil, UNESCO, and the UN aimed at

investigating, exposing, and dismantling disinformation related to climate change, as well as the socialization of the results of the research

The GIIICC is advised by

• Climate Action Against Disinformation

• International Panel on Information Environment

• Conscious Advertising Network

• I4T Knowledge Global Network

• Forum on Information and Democracy, and

• World Meteorological Organization

All of these have some interesting things about them but here and in the next post I will look a bit more at the first two, CAAD and IPIE.

The CAAD website acknowledges only a few organizations (shown below) said to be part of its 90 members.

CAAD’s work centers on a narrative about the fossil fuel industry campaign to “Deny, Deceive, Delay” thereby “obstructing” transformative climate action. For CAAD, disinformation means This is an overly simplistic telling of the past 30+ years of international engagement over the topic of climate change and energy. As such, it is its own disinformation campaign: it fails to take seriously the history and practical technicalities of suppling energy to societies, and the origination of the delay narrative with intention of pursuing litigation- of which several of the groups pictured above are involved.

CAAD would be old news except, the same messages from the same players. Except that work is now a key part of the in the United Nations’ global communication efforts on information integrity.

Let’s not forget the small army of Tik-Tok influencers the UN has organized together with an Australian political activist to “Verify” correct climate narratives.

CAAD’s methodologies is therefore of interest. We’ll take a look at this and IPIE in the next post.

1. Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay