The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Good afternoon, everyone. Sounds high. Hello, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. I guess we can sit in the order -- hello, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for this very important discussion on information integrity on climate change, a discussion that's at somehow the cross-roads of different issues. Information integrity, of course, climate change of course, and this is why we're here today in Oslo on Internet Governance and how the Internet shaped our information systems and what we can do about it to ensure reliable information on a crucial issue that is climate change.
Information integrity and climate information, you will see this through the presentation of our panelist today is an important topic and we'll have some evidence from researchers and colleagues. It really delays our ability to tackle climate change and to us at the form of information and technology, it's a Democratic issue. It's a Democratic issue which climate disinformation is weaponized for political purposes and political gains. It's a Democratic issue when environmental issues are targeted, are threatened, and in the worst case are murdered.
And it is a Democratic issue when access to information to facts, to knowledge is undermined and we can clearly see today that all and a lot of knowledge institutions are being targeted for doing their work.
This is why at the information of democracy we don't dedicate work stream with not only states of the policy for [?] and democracy on ensuring information integrity, on climate change, and other environmental issues. This is led by Brazil and Armenia as Brazil will host, as a lot of you may know, COP30 in November and as Armenia will host COP17 on biodiversity next year.
The reason we launched this work stream is because we want to make sure that the answers that will be wrote to this specific challenge also respect democracy principles, democracy principles including transparency of powers and access to reliable information and something that's really dear to our heart, the political and ideology called neutrality of information communication space and the entities that structure this information space.
Because I have the privilege of being the first one to talk, I will just stress on one specific point that is related to information integrity. The fact that to have information integrity, we need people and institutions that provide reliable, independent, trustworthy information.
And I would like to stress the importance of environmental [?] and the immediate where doing this work of investigating climate change and environmental issues.
And to us, we need to ensure that they can do their job fairly and safely, that we have access to their facts and to their findings through social networks and throughout the information ecosystems.
And that their work is also sustainable and we're doing a lot of work on the sustainability these days.
So thanks a lot, I would like to thank again all our panelists today. We'll have a very important presentation on different efforts that are being done, the global initiative on -- for information integrity on climate change that is led by actually three first panelists, Brazil, UN, and UNESCO.
And I will just like to start with you, Eugenio Garcia, the department of director for science, technology, and intellectual property of the Brazil Ministry of Health.
If you could start by presenting Brazil's global initiative and how the idea emerge and what are the challenges you wish to address and what are the priorities for Brazil.
>> EUGENIO GARCIA: Thank you very much. Glad to be here. I think that for Brazil, it's clear that climate crisis is real. It's urgent and not something for tomorrow.
And Brazil has been severely affected by extreme weather events, for example, in 2023, the drought in the Amazon rainforest was possibly the worst in history.
And also the flooding in the south of Brazil last year, 2024. Of course was a tragedy with many people displaced. But this -- to show that these extreme weather events, they are affecting the life of people in very direct ways. Because it's not something that we think of global warming or something that's not felt by people on the ground.
And we have last year the Brazilian presidency of G20. And we thought that would be in terms of testing the waters to see if we could include information integrity in the programme in the agenda for specifically the digital economy working group.
And we had four priorities for this working group. One is universal and meaningful connectivity. The second infrastructure and Digital Public Infrastructure.
Then the third artificial intelligence and the governance of AI.
And the fourth priority that we present to G20 members was information integrity. We didn't know the reaction or the feedback we'd get from this discussion, but in the end we reached consensus, and it was positive because for the first time that the G20 addressed the information integrity.
And we had our ministerial meeting in the northeast of Brazil. When you find the four priorities including information integrity, for those interested you can download the (non-English language) declaration, just make a search and then it's available in English for you to read later and how this topic was addressed by G20.
And then in the meantime we discuss with the United Nations secretariat in New York, in particular the department of global communications, and UNESCO in terms of joining forces.
And also other stakeholders. But the idea was to launch the global initiative on information integrity and climate change during the summit of the G20. And that's what we did in partnership with UN and the UNESCO.
I think for not only the Brazilian government, but this is a top priority. And we pledged for the global fund I think you'll hear later how the fund is structured for this global initiative, but we pledged $1 million that's adding to what we say that's important, but also showing that our commitment is really something that we mean, something extremely important.
I think in terms of coordinating efforts and talking to other stakeholders in different international organizational different forums, for example, G7, now have COP30 coming in Berlin, it's next November, as we know. It's a huge responsibility.
So we want to create this global movement so that we have information factor like there's a growing awareness of importance of addressing this issue for -- in terms of how we address climate change challenges.
And in terms of bringing this topic everywhere, I say the Global Digital Compact also mentioned information integrity, it's interesting to highlight this because it was adopted by the UN in 2024.
And UN Member States committed to work together to promote information integrity, tolerance, and respect in the digital space and strengthen international cooperation to address the challenge of mis/disinformation online.
And by the way in the elements paper of the WSIS+20 process, they also information integrity, highlighting that stakeholders should promote information integrity, tolerance and respect in digital space. This is a lot of the GDC, and protecting the integrity of the Democratic processes, strengthen cooperation, and also trying to mitigate the risks of the information, manipulation in a manner consistent with international law.
So I think this is part of a global effort with our partners. And in terms of engaging with COP30, I think that's now we are trying to focus our action to -- in terms of reaching November with some concrete initiatives.
So you know that the president of the COP30 ambassador in his first letter he mentioned the idea of the call to action that we -- it's (non-English language). (Non-English language) is a Portuguese word for the Indigenous communities in Brazil. The idea of having a collective endeavor that in a village everybody would help each other to -- to -- in dispute of coming together to deliver results.
So the individuals would -- each one would bring something, sometimes bring tools or materials or skills so to reach this collective. So we're planning for that information integrity on climate change in our call to action.
Of course other -- we have a meeting and we'll talk about this, trying to integrate the action empowerment. But this action that we'll be launching soon is trying to integrate this with the COP30 because these are efforts that we hope is a global movement with very concrete actions to promote information integrity.
Such as gathering and sharing data, rigorous research with evidence and knowledge on risk to climate information integrity, including disinformation and impacts on climate action in line with the GDC. Also sharing tools to strengthen resilience again disinformation and promote information integrity on climate change.
Developing communications designed to raise public awareness and foster a global culture of information integrity and including through trusted voice for answers.
These are the goals for this call to action. Fostering media sustainability, including its economic viability to cover environmental and climate change related issues.
Supporting the protection of environmental journalist, activists, communicators, and scientists.
Protecting scientific data and datasets related to climate change. Promote transparency and accountability in digital advertising to foster [?] information and integrity.
Fostering target media information in digital literacy. Related to climate change.
And also donating financial resource to UNESCO's global fund.
And to help to gather evidence in the strategic communications, including professional journalist.
To conclude, I think this call to action that is the next step in the global initiative related to COP30 will contribute to including information integrity on climate change in the COP30 process by uniting the efforts across borders and sectors and representing a pivotal step towards a global movement, as I said, for promoting information integrity on climate change.
So I will stop here. But I think that's the idea. What we are trying to achieve.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: And this call to action will be open to all stakeholders.
>> EUGENIO GARCIA: Open to all stakeholders, so we will launch this and have the details and we'll have a period that we'll be accessing the contributions that we expect to receive. And we are optimistic that we'll receive many proposals.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: So that's the first call to action on the road to COP30. And I think that one thing that I find really remarkable with the work that Brazil is doing is bringing community together, different communities.
>> EUGENIO GARCIA: Yeah.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: And community working on Internet Governance and now on climate change. And I think bringing this community to our topics of information integrity is also very valuable. And I'm sure that the UN is also well placed to do this kind of work.
So Charlotte Scaddan is a Sean yore adviser on -- if you could put on the slides, please for Charlotte who is a senior adviser on information integrity at United Nations department of global communication.
And before you start, happy birthday. Because today is.
>> CHARLOTTE SCADDAN: Not my birthday.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: It's not Charlotte's birthday. The first anniversary of the global principles on information integrity that were published exactly one year ago this day.
>> I thought you were going to tell her age.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: No, I would not. Sorry.
So Charlotte, can you tell us a bit more about strengthening climate information integrity globally with a focus on public policy and communication in the UN assembly?
>> SHARAD SHARMA: To me, it's more important than my own birthday with the amount of effort that we put into developing the global principles. So I'll just start by giving some context.
As you know, the UN -- I'm sure you're very familiar with our work on climate change, it's a huge priority for us, climate action. But more recently, information integrity has also become a major priority.
And there's a range of initiatives going on around the UN related to information integrity. But I wanted to touch on two today.
One of course is the global principles for information integrity that, as you mentioned, were launched a year ago today by the Secretary General Antonio Guterres. And the principles for those of you who aren't familiar with them are, I think, a groundbreaking framework for action for a safer, more inclusive ecosystem.
And they put forward -- we put forward five of these principles, recommendations for different stakeholders around five principles. And you see them on this screen here. They are societal trust and resilience, healthy incentives, public empowerment, independent, pre and pluralistic media, and last but not least, transparency and research.
So the principles frame information integrity as an information ecosystem where freedom of expression is fully enjoyed and where accurate, reliable information free from discrimination and hate is available to all in an open, inclusive, safe, secure information environment.
And this entails a pluralistic information space that fosters trust, knowledge, and individual choice for all.
So actually in the past year since we launched, the response has been really overwhelming. And we've seen government, Civil Society, media, businesses, and other really harness these principles through activities and efforts around the world.
So we go into work on information integrity and to implement the global principles with our eyes wide open. Because the challenge before us is formidable, and the threat landscape is vast. Risks include mis and disinformation, I think everyone's generally familiar with those, as well as hate speech and harassment. But we see more risks that are structural and political.
Suppression of independent news media and academic and society work and voices. Denying of access to information. The defunding or removal of public sources of information and of course top of mind now are risks related to emerging tech, emerging technology. We see them including in break neck speed, they're not slowing down.
People are reliant on this tech to shape the world and everything happening in it. But while GenAI tools are proliferating in the public domain, they can't uniformly be relied on for accurate information.
And we see ongoing tests and studies that show that, you know, these tools frequently do not distinguish between rigorous science on the one hand and dirty data or outright nonsense on the other.
And yet, people are accessing this flawed data but they're not equipped to assess its veracity and people just don't know what's real and what to believe.
We are, in effect, Guinea pigs in an information experiment in which the resilience of our society is being put to the test.
So in short, the spectrum of risk is broad. And it really touches on all areas of the UN's work. And what we need for sustainable future in functioning democracies. When it comes to climate, the motivations and impacts are twofold.
Climate information and hate obviously seek to undermine climate action and we've seen the fossil fuel industry and others including state taxes pour billions in this over decades. But we also see climate change used as a wedge issue to polarize, to disrupt, to destabilize democratic processes, particularly around elections. And we always will see a spike around pivotal societal moments.
We know enough to be able to make these conclusions, but the evidence base ranges. While there's some strong research from major academic research and Civil Society organizations, as we'll hear shortly, much of this research is concentrated in a handful of countries where the support and funding have been focus up till now.
As many of us here know well, this support has been under attack and politicized. Especially in recent months with researchers, Civil Society and others targeted. So that's why our focus on research is really key.
From our own limited research efforts, we've identified a range of tactics used and attempts to undermine climate-related information. The narratives used as part of these tactics which, you know, you see a list here of a sample of them, and I'll just mention a few. They range from there being no scientific consensus around climate to climate changes are manufactured, political tool, a scapegoat for domestic policy and failures. Using climate issues as a means of justifying totalitarian policies and even to control the weather.
Sometimes when I say that last one about controlling the weather I get snickers. But in fact, this is actually coming from leading political figures.
And these claims are used to steady erode trust in academic scientific institutions in the COP, in the COP process and also to isolate people to certain information sources which often are very localized.
And what we've seen is that underlying a lot of these tactics is what we call the us versus them, the constructed enemy, adversarial staff. It's painting those who support climate action as elite serving only their own interests. And these behaviors are not in the fringe. They're in the mainstream of information spaces and they're being used by influential figures, both state and non-state actors.
So what can we do?
Well, as laid out in the global principles, first and foremost, we need multi-stakeholder action. It's a very UN term, I think, but it's really a valid one. Obviously, and this brings me to the next example, you know, a really leading example of this is our global initiative that we just heard about. And it's really a major priority for us at the UN as we approach COP.
Our response has to be multiple faceted and include prevention and mitigation measures across the information ecosystem. This includes strategic communications and advocacy, of course, political engagement, human rights-based policy and community engagement.
We need to recalibrate our previous thinking about the information ecosystem and the information landscape so that we better understand people's relationship to information sources today, which is often playing out in very niche spaces and at the community level.
What many institutions have long thought, and I include the UN in that, have long thought as mainstream media is no longer mainstream. The landscape has shifted. We need to immediately fill information voids, because if we don't fill them, disinformation actors will and they'll do it quickly and without hesitation.
And we need to think longer term about building trust and how we can keep attention by carefully considering our tone and language around climate issues and going about engaging communities with humility and respect so that we avoid reinforcing the us versus them trap.
When it comes to structural obstacles, what's become crystal clear is the advertisers that fund the digital ecosystem and have unique power. They can act quickly and effectively to mitigate harms and influence digital platforms in ways that we cannot.
That's why a few days ago I was with colleagues from organizations represented here on stage at the CAN [?] which is the biggest and important gathering of the ad industry. And we took our message of information and integrity to that key audience.
I'm really happy that Harriet is here to explain the advertising angle in more detail. It's somewhere -- it's an angle that we're really going to be focusing on a lot in coming months.
So I'll just end by saying we don't have time to spare. The urgency and the scale of this challenge, quite active coalitions and collaborations so that we can increase global resilience and we need to find those entry points for action before it's too late.
So I'll leave you with that. Thanks.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you. Thank you so much, Charlotte. I think one thing I take from the presentation is we need to have these sort of [?] approach gathering all the stakeholders.
Guilherme analysed the division for digital inclusion policies and digital transformation. You've been also a leader in that space and also working a lot on freedom and safety of journalist. Glad to have you on stage and have you talk a little bit complementing what has already been said on the global initiative.
Maybe more specifically around UNESCO's approach and the fund that's been mentioned already and the work that UNESCO is doing with interconnected issues.
>> GUILHERME GODOI: Thank you. A pleasure to be here with all these fantastic colleagues on the panel.
Let me start by telling you a story. 20 years ago when I was not an international bureaucrat and I was doing intelligent things in my life, I coordinated an initiative about climate change in journalism and the media.
And it's interesting to look 20 years back, it was for Latin America, on what were our mistakes at that time. Because we didn't notice, and that was a huge mistake, that we couldn't face the issue looking into just one of the actors. So we lose what the bad actors already knew at that time, the ecosystem. So initiative that I did 20 years ago was successful in its goals. Our initiative was to train journalist to speak -- to cover better climate change.
But when we were talking with them or even with the scientists, the logic is the scientists want to know how to give better interviews for the journalist. They were not even thinking that there was an important field of research on the issue of information integrity, to use a monochromatic word because we didn't that have expression at the time.
So our -- what we were betting our horses is that if we chain the information producers at the time to journalist, we will solve the problem. And this was a huge mistake of our part, because we were not prepared enough to think the rest of the ecosystem. So the initiative here, and what Charlotte was describing in terms of information integrity concept, is very much related to this broader idea that information is a public good. And then in UNESCO, we simplify that with three pillars, right?
If we consider information as a public good, we need tomorrow power the citizens to interact with the ecosystem, education, media literacy, so on and so forth.
It's a necessary condition but it's not a necessary and sufficient condition. Because it's unfair to say to my uncle or to my grandmother, well, don't circulate this thing you received in the Whatsapp or whatever. Knowing that on the other side of the fence you have trillion dollar companies, either fossil fuel companies or companies that are relying a lot on these attention economy, so it's unfair to put only on the shoulders of the society to solve the problem. But it's necessary.
So this is qualifying the demand. The other pillars that we need to qualify the supply. So 20 years ago when I was doing those intelligent things, we thought that qualifying of the supply was to support the journalist. But that was wrong. We needed to support the scientists. You need to support the influencers, we need to support the advertisers. All those that are sending inputs to the system and to guarantee that this support is enough for them to do these in a reliable and accurate manner, but also they need to survive. Advertisers are doing quite well, but the journalists are not. Or the scientist.
So we need also to deal with the economic issue. But also is the safety issue. 20 years ago the journalists were telling us there's an issue here and there, but no one was saying I'm being attacked because I'm covering climate change. Now we hear that all the time. And it's not only attacked online, which is already a big issue. They are being attacked physically. They're being attacked with massive slaps everywhere.
There's complexity here in protecting the supply side of this story. But again, it's a necessary condition but is no longer a necessary and sufficient condition.
So the third part of this story is what Charlotte was explaining. How we deal with the transmission chain, right, with the ecosystem that includes the social media companies, the governance, and now the AI and whatever.
So it's not one thing or the other, it's one thing and the other. And that's why it's so complex.
So the initiative wants to look into this, recognising this complexity. Telling look, there is one particular element here that is a get, and it's a get particularly in the Global South as I guess you are going to speak about your recent findings. That as we have anecdotical evidence out there, a lot of people are debunking this information, but we didn't know what's going on behind the scenes. Who's funding this disinformation. What are the systems of distribution. What are the conflicts of interest that are there. What are the lack of governance mechanisms.
And then the funds that we launder is an open call for those interests, global initiative and information integrity, open call, they will find it, you can apply until July 6th, closing the propaganda element.
The idea is precisely how we can collect more evidence to support our work, our work in the strategic communications in the UN and UNESCO and others. The work of governments and democracy on governance and so on and so forth. That's the idea.
Basically we're going to fund research and investigative journalism in these areas.
So to conclude the bit and coming back to my initial story of 20 years ago, when I was training those many journalist in Latin America and discussing climate change, for not a second in many of those hundreds of trainings I did or my team, we were including in the conversation of the journalist the need for them and today for others to understand information integrity as part of the problem.
They were only looking to the climate change component. And this, it's not working. We need to look into this connection between those. And for me this is a bit of beauty of this. And also it's already a positive message, because not only as when I say Brazil, UN, and UNESCO, there is, as Eugenio mentioned, they are including the global initiative, and I think there is room for optimism because there is a concern and this concern is raising different elements across the board.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much, Guilherme. Supply, demand, and distribution. And as we've seen on -- and on more access, better access to data to have better understanding of what's actually happening out there and in these really opaque information systems.
Let me now turn to Harriet, I think we have some slides again. If we can have them.
Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the advertising network and also representing today CAAD, which is a Climate Action Against Disinformation. And as already mentioned with you and in the presentation, taking a deep dive into at-funded risks to climate information integrity.
The floor is yours.
>> HARRIET KINGABY: Thank you so much. Thank you for the warm welcome today.
So for those of you that didn't know, the Conscious Advertising Network is a broad coalition of over 190 brands, advertising agencies, and Civil Society groups. And we exist to essentially ensure effective advertising works for everybody.
And happily I can say that we are a very practical application of the multi-stakeholder approach that I've heard a lot about at this conference. And what we essentially do is we know that the advertising is causing human rights issues, we know that Civil Society has the deep knowledge there and the advertisers understand the advertising ecosystem extremely well. So we bring these groups together to try to find solutions.
Essentially, as Charlotte said, we've just come back from the CAN festival of advertising, and although the language that's used is very different, although there may be issues of presented, it's very different. I can assure that you that the issues of information integrity were discussed there incredibly passionately and almost as passionately as I've seen them discussed here.
It's framing it in terms of the business case and I want to unpack that a bit for you today. But I want to start out by addressing the elephant in the room, which is that obviously advertisers are on one side of things part of the problem.
You know, this is a quite from the IPPC report climate change impacts adaption and vulnerability that talks about the vested political, organized and financed mission information and contrarian climate change communication. Which is undermining information integrity around climate change.
And yes, the advertising industry itself is producing some of that disinformation. Yes, it's working with clients such as fossil fuel clients that are part of the problem.
However, I want to just tell you that this is only a part of the way that advertising interacts with information integrity. And I hope that I can convince you that advertisers can also be a part of the solution today.
So this is a hideous graphic, but I think it illustrates the attention economy quite well. Advertising is essentially the funding model behind the attention economy. And therefore, the reason that addiction is designed into the system.
Advertising funds the media. It funds the platforms, it funds more traditional media ecosystem, and online the longer we can be kept scrolling, the longer our attention can be kept, the more ads can be served to us and therefore, the more profit the platforms can make.
And what this has done is this has completely changed the incentive structures behind the production and distribution of content. So quality used to be pretty high up on the agenda. You know, informing citizens, entertaining citizens. But in fact, now the emphasis on content production is about keeping us hooked. This is creating unhealthy consequences for information and integrity around really important issues such as climate change.
Most of this you know, I think there's been plenty of other talking about this at this conference. But the twist that I want you to take away, this situation doesn't work for advertisers either. And that creates opportunities for us to create powerful alliances that can really, really take on some of this system.
So let me explain.
I can get the clicker to work.
Essentially this is too small for you to read maybe, but what you need to know is that the global advertising market is enormous. We're talking $1 trillion as of this year and it's growing. And particularly the digital component of this system is growing.
Now what this means is the problems that we're talking about today are being amplified and accelerated. And therefore, they are becoming really business critical for advertisers to understand and to tackle.
Much as democracy relies on a sense of shared reality on trust and advertising also relies on trust. So where you have a fall in trust of our information ecosystems, advertising also starts to become less effective.
So what this means is businesses are paying more for less return on their advertising spend. And falling trust in information essentially is a real -- is a shared problem that we're both looking at.
Now, at the heart of this problem is the fact that the advertising ecosystem is so incredibly opaque, if you think about how we consume media now, the -- you know, my journey through the media ecosystem will be completely different to Guilherme's today, different to Charlotte's, would be different to all of yours. And the technology required to track me around my personalized media journey and to serve me ads is enormous.
There are many actors in the system, there are many companies that collect my data, process my data, work out what ads to show me and do online bidding to make sure I see the ads I'm supposed to see.
And unlike other corporate supply chains, the supply chains to make this shirt for example, advertisers have no idea where their advertising is going and what it's funding. There's no mapping of those supply chains. And what happens is people take advantage.
One side of things is fraud. There's a lot of fraud in the system. The other side of things is that, you know, the platforms are, you know, are taking large amounts of money.
And this is coming at the cost of publishers. So we've heard about the fall in advertising revenue to publishers and the impact that's having on the news system. We heard about news deserts this morning.
And there was a report that found out of every dollar that an advertiser spends and puts into the system, only 41 cents of it actually reaches the publishers. And that used to be much, much more.
And so the rest of it is swallowed up by organizations like Google and frankly organizations we've never heard of. And all of this compounds the problem, you know, you've got less reporting on important topics, you know, you're degrading information integrity, you've got less trust.
So this is fueling the production distribution of climate disinformation. And you know, a lot is tempting to think that this would -- this -- that businesses can be opposed to climate action and sometimes this is true. But there are vast businesses that need to us solve the climate crisis in order to survive.
Think about the businesses that make coffee and chocolate or wine, think about the insurance industry, for example. And essentially, you know, advertisers alone don't have the tools to solve this problem. They need to work with us, everyone here, in order to make that happen.
So I want you to -- I want to show you what I mean, the issues that this system is causing. So the writing on this is small for those of you who can't see it. The advertiser -- it's a screen grab from YouTube. The advertiser is called money supermarket. They help consumers get quotes from their insurance companies. They work a lot with insurance companies.
And they are advertising on disinformation that suggests that hurricane Helene is somehow linked to the U.S. controlling the weather.
As Charlotte mentioned, this kind of disinformation creates distrust in the institutions that's supposed to help us when extreme weather events happen. And it also is pretty bad for the insurance industry because it slows efforts to sort out the problem.
Here's YouTube advertising on its own channels against content spreading disinformation about the cleanup efforts Venezuelan floods that killed hundreds of people and the cleanups were undermined by climate disinformation.
This is percentage points of the Spanish GDP. This situation is not good for business. It is not good for us, but it is not good for them either. And here is get your guide on a Brazilian channel with nearly 3 million followers. And promoting a narrative which is -- was used during the 2023 [?] disaster as a way to discredit government cleanup efforts.
Again there are slowed efforts to help.
And you know, this is -- this is still earning money two years later. The reason I draw your attention to this, this is not content that's organic, this is content that's earning money for its creators.
So I can find you examples or Tiktok and other channels of this, and I can find you examples of creators earning money from this.
And nobody wants the system to continue. Not us, not you, not advertisers. Because essentially not only are they wasting their money, but they're also putting their brands and reputation at risk. And so together we need to address this.
Not one single actor has the power to figure this out. But we do need to start moving conversations on the platforms away from content, individual pieces of content and Whack-a-Mole to talk about systems change and the business model.
And so I'm prepared -- and the UN global principles and information integrity are a fantastic way of doing that, of looking at that through this systemic lens.
So I'm going to wrap up, I promise. Final slide. Things I want to talk about today are about essentially taking on the information economy.
In order to engage advertisers in this situation, we need to be talk about the system which is it drawing people in this order to serve them more ads and therefore prioritizing content which is divisive or untrue.
Next, we need to drive transparency through this incredibly opaque system at scale. And I'll talk more later on about a case study we have of how that can lead to great business outcomes as well as outcomes for society.
And also once they get a handle on the supply chain, they can start to think about investing in pluralistic media.
This is good for us and the advertiser. Working in this area can Koln are only bring us better solutions.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thanks so much for the deep dive in the economics of the situation. With all the different related stakeholders, you mentioned that democracy we need a sense shared of reality. And that makes nice transition to our next guest, Fredrick Ogenga. Fredrick, you're a member of the international panel on the information environment. And you notably were a member of the scientific panel on information integrity about climate change sciences. You worked for several months, I think nine months, to get to the report that was published last week.
And with you we'd like to have this deep dive on what does research tells us about climate disinformation, because I think that we also need this sort of global assessment if we're to come up with [?]. The floor is yours. And I think we have slides again. Here you go.
>> FREDRICK OGENGA: Yeah. So interesting, thank you so much for the organizers to first of all welcome us in Oslo.
The IPIE is an entity that looks at the integrity of information environment across the board.
So climate information environment is also one of those things that we look at. And so what I'm going to talk about today is a report what we compiled over a period of 12 months looking at about 300 articles and using qualitative and computational methods as well as quantitative methods to arrive at -- which includes data visualization. But I won't really dive into that for the case of time.
I want to tell you about really what we found out. We used the linear model of communication which really talks about -- because what I'm gathering here in the panel today, there's a crisis in the information environment on climate change. There's clearly a crisis. And that crisis is what made us wonder.
And as panelist which was led by Claude Jensen from Copenhagen, we realized that if you used the communication model, then we realized that there are people produce those messages, the sauce. [?] the message, and then the channel and the messaging. And then the consequences of their messaging and then of course after that what then can we do about that kind of messaging.
So if you look at that slide we're talking about who the actors were, the messages and the channels that they used, there are key audiences and what the consequences of their messaging was and what solutions we ought to have in that process.
So 300 articles were looked at and then after looking at those articles, we basically inspected the gaps and came up with recommendations.
So the first one in terms of actors in the datafication of the information environment on climate change is actually four companies, corporations. We have politicians. We do have governments, you know, and also some states.
We also have legacy and social media and scientific hands for hire. These are people who are hired to write something about climate change in favour of a particular position.
And for example, if I just take a quick example, in countries like the U.S., in North America we found out that the media -- the mainstream media still led in terms of -- in terms of spreading false information about climate. And this -- this kind of information varied based on the type of media.
If it was a conservative media or right-leaning media, you'd see the kind of messaging that come about in those kinds of platforms.
And their messages were actually those that disputed the science about climate change. And this is from people like the U.S. president which we saw in the previous slide.
So there we also realize that not much is known about the impact of what social media does in terms of the messaging in social media and how social media therefore impacts on audiences in ways that can be measured and analysed to come up with countermeasures.
And so that is one of the gaps. So this also has been tied here because we have a level where there's no transparency in digital platforms, especially on those -- the people who are owners, the owners of the platforms and those that produce data in those platforms.
And so eventually the messaging is that strategic skepticism is actually replacing climate science. So people are obscuring climate science in order to delay the climate [?] to cut into the chains of those in the policy line of coming up with measures to address climate change and effectively at the railing climate interventions, and again, we saw that -- that classic media, of course, is leading in that arena.
And I talked about how really still not clear on how social media is impacting directly on audiences.
If this is the scenario, then the kind of messages that we see, the message of contrarianism, and the climatist cartelism is something that we see impacting on the information environment on climate change. These are things that we need to address and deal with.
So the key audiences that are supposed to be in the leading front, in the front lines of climate interventions, who are usually actually policymakers, are derailed and they're targeted. They're targeted by misinformation, and this misinformation feeds into the policy chain and eventually effects climate interventions.
So something needs to be done there. And therefore, effectively, generally what this does and panelists have mentioned this, it erodes public trust on climate science and also trust in institutions that are responsible for addressing climate change.
So it has a dual effect. And if that happens, then it becomes challenging to address climate change going forward.
So the IPIE, in our report we came one a few recommendations about measures that we can take to address the crisis of information integrity on climate science.
And one of those measures, some of them have been mentioned, is we need to -- we need to -- we need to educate people, you know. We need some level of education whether it's on the science of climate change or even the medium that transmit climate change. Because from the model that I begun talking about, the linear communication model, we saw this media and channels go hand in hand.
So educate audiences, our stakeholders about the media that transmit climate information and climate action and then we might get some success in climate intervention.
We also have to look at the regulatory and the policy environment, you know. So regulation and legislation is something that is very key that you need to look at.
For example, you need to come one legislation that talk generally about how you need to talk about climate science writing an article about it.
There's a contentious area that we also found out in the data that is emerging on litigation. Where minimal literature is talking about stakeholders and government and civil societies coming out and pointing out those people who are responsible for doing what is called green washing, you know.
And whether to what extent can you litigate on those issue. It's a gray area. It's a contentious area and the data is still minimal. So that's one area that I think is an opportunity to explore further in terms of research.
And then I think I've got them all.
Yes, there's one that I didn't talk about, which is called counterpublics, you know. Counterpublics are simply, I think I heard about it from my Brazilian colleague, and from my UNESCO colleague about how we bring different voices from different spaces to form a coalition about counterpublics who are responsible to counter forced discourses and misinformation from these forces that are driving misinformation about climate change.
It's a commission of collaboration about defending truth about climate change and also scientists that are responsible for defending climate -- climate science and the integrity of information about climate science.
I think I'll leave it there and explore more in the Q&A. Thank you so much.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much, Fredrick. Please do take a look at the report, it's a rather longish report, 27 pages, I think, but there's a very streamlined executive summary that also brings the main conclusion and points of recommendations which are very, very useful in this specific field.
We still have a little bit more than half an hour, and we wanted to make sure that we also have an interactive session. We've been talking a lot about multi-stakeholderism, so if there some questions in the room, I think there is already one person and then one this. So maybe we can take the two and the first two questions and have -- yes. Can you please introduce yourself.
>> Thank you very much. My name is Pavel with blue link action network in Bulgaria and the ATC board.
This is seriously becoming my favourite panel since the morning when I heard the one on integrity of journalism. My network supports climate defenders and the climate coalition and as a journalist, it's extremely interesting to listen to all the solutions you've presented.
What we have come across is that the climate defenders, as well as other activists around there, seem to -- we seem to automatically say they're the good guys and we expect always automatically that problems lie from the industry and elsewhere. Which is true in most cases.
But what we realize is that there is a certain lack of norms, lack of standards that even the climate activist are coming to complain about at some point. They say the information environment has become so volatile, so confractured, we can't even operate healthy in it. So we thought what if we come back to the norms of journalism as they used to be 20 years ago.
The ones that we're saying you need to double-check your sources and offer the opposite point of view to your opponent even if you disagree and so on.
And we offer this to the broader public, but to the climate defenders, to the Civil Society as a start and see how they could abide with that same knowledge.
Will they stop seeking for clicks? Will they stop communicating on grounded information? Would they be willing to take this responsibility?
I want to hear what you think about this. Do you think this might work as a self regulated. Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much.
>> Hello, I'm Lee, I come from South Africa.
I work for the Ministry of Basic education. In the part of the world where I come from, climate change is viewed as a White man's problem. It is viewed as a matter of whether it is cold or it is hot. But in actual effect, what we see is that it means loss of life, loss of property, loss of assets and displacement.
Now, what are the ethics in information sharing and information dissemination when it comes to climate change and climate action and education for sustainable development?
Given that we don't want to incite fear, but we're working with a society that will not do anything unless it responds to a problem.
And so you want to then create that picture, that this is the problem that you're facing as the African Continent and as the world. This is the problem. You're not inciting fear.
Yet, when you find people who are really doing great work with teaching Africans like myself about the impact of climate change in our lives, you're always going to be seen as someone who's inciting fear and anxiety on people. So what are the things that we can do and how far can we go to ensure there is that balance about teaching people about this is an issue of sustainability, but also an issue of safety.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. My name is [?] I come from Democratic Republic of Congo. I work at the border with DRC in Uganda. My submission or question is so much concern with the information I noted from a different panelist.
In the region where I come from, there is massive data collection going on for couple projects. Data being collected from Indigenous territories, data from community forest.
My concern is not about who collect this data, but my worry is where are they getting this data. What protocols are in place for them to store this data without harming Indigenous people or forest-dependent community.
Because in case this data get leaked or is compromised to have a very dangerous consequences on Indigenous people and forest-dependent community, because I've seen it in Congo, where land has been stolen and forest given away to foreign investors to mine critical minerals needed to power AI and other things. That is very painful.
But also when you look at the work of the UN special represent rapporteur, you noticed recently that human right defenders who worked on issues of climate justice are not only [?] physically or through legal intimidation, but also they are surveilled and their data is spied by government.
In Brazil, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and also in Indonesia, these are three measure forest person where activist are at risk.
And I don't know at the UNESCO level, call it from [?] what international mechanism in place to ensure that member countries abide by, so that data concerning forest, Indigenous territories, or even security of defenders working on forests and climate justice is protected.
Myself, I work for 12 years as a digital security trainer helping Indigenous people in the Congo basin to communicate and work safely. But beginning from general [?] I became a member of Parliament in the DRC national assembly. But I see myself more as an activist who took himself to the Parliament. In government there's a lot of bureaucracy and I continue helping human right defenders and environmental activist and Indigenous people to protect their land.
But now we have the big thing that's the project by Brazil which is called -- it is called the tropical forest forever facility. This is a multibillion project scheduled to be launched in Brazil at the next COP. This project, if developed, means Indigenous people or forest dependent community can receive 4% of contribution being made from the sale of carbon created generated from their forest. And for this to be quantified, data need to be collected on the carbon potential of forestry.
And last month we are at a meeting of green forest [?] in Brazil in Congo for people from Indonesia, Brazil and Congo and also Uganda [?] for a week. And the question here was data integrity. Who is using this data.
How will a local chief know that his forest is the one providing global environmental benefit, yet he doesn't have the data.
And what make Brazil and other partner government to only get 4% of the total benefit arriving from, you know, couple credit of -- arriving from climate benefit being provided by forest countries, providing benefit of climate mitigation.
Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much for the question. I like how we touched on the vast majority -- the vast topics or the different topics that we can include in the concept of information integrity ranging from journalism and the ethics of journalism to data governance.
So before turning and giving the floor to other questions, I don't know if some of you would like to react and answer some of the questions.
>> CHARLOTTE SCADDAN: Sure, I could speak to the second question about fear, which I think is -- I can't actually see the gentleman here. There you go. Thank you for asking that question. It's an excellent one. I can tell you it's one that as communicators on climate we have been grappling with for a very long time. What we have learned over a period of many years is that, yes, fear can be a motivator, but fear is not going to inspire people.
And I think there are ways that one can communicate without scare tactic. People need to situation we're facing. There's no getting around it.
But what they also need to know is what they can do about it or what the government can do about it. What actions they can actually take. They need to see specific examples of especially community-led actions. That's something that people can relate to.
In terms of the impacts, I think they also need to understand and, you know, myself is included in this, when I think about climate change, it becomes this overwhelming topic, right? You just want to shut down because you feel that you can't -- you feel that you can't do anything about it on an individual level.
And that's true, right? We need to look to the fossil fuel industry and governments and others to take action.
But I think there are steps that we can all taken, including if we live in democracies we can vote, right, for candidates who support climate action. But I think in terms of the impact it's important to, as you alluded to, bring it back to what are some of the individual impacts, the economic impacts, but also the economic impacts of climate action. How does it affect people's wallet and daily lives and their quality of life.
So I think that, yes, it's important to stress the reality of the situation. And that might be scary. But equally it's important at the same time to offer really solid solutions and the way forward.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much, Charlotte. I don't know if -- yes.
>> FREDRICK OGENGA: I would want to combine two questions. One that was asked about journalism and going back to the tenets of journalism to address the climate change problematic.
And also with that aspect of use of data and how sure are you that you're using the right data.
Now, what our report can help you understand some of those questions, because we -- we asked ourselves in the report what is the really the measure, the threshold of information integrity about climate science.
And we came up with a few issues that are familiar. Things like accuracy, you know. Transparency, reliability of data.
Transparency, accuracy, reliability of data and how consistent that data is.
Because climate science data has also been inconsistent. If you say global warming is bringing about climate change, then tomorrow you're saying something else, you're inconsistent.
So for that we also observed in the study that minimal studies have been done in the Global South. In fact, we came with out of 300 studies, we only uncovered one study from South Africa that touches on the metrics that were mentioned.
So Global South, la continue America and Southeast Asia, very minimal data. Most of the data was coming from North America, Europe, China, and Russia. So that tells us something about also our interest in wanting to venture into research to produce homegrown data that can inform us.
And to that -- also to that extent, also comes the question of infrastructure. Because when you -- because when you want to solve climate -- when you want climate solutions out of that, then you also need to make that data secure. And therefore, the question of infrastructure comes in.
Where we lack data centers that are reliable, and if you have to have magnitude of data on datasets and climate sets, then you need to host them elsewhere.
And so how sure are you that that data will come and be beneficial to you as data that has some level of integrity.
Those are questions that can be answered. That's why we are saying it's a multi-stakeholder approach where so many actors did put their heads together so that they find solutions to the climate challenge. But also just from the understanding that the problem begins with data and those datasets.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much. I think Guilherme, you wanted to --
>> GUILHERME GODOI: Very briefly. On the questions of standard and journalism and ethics, of course this is very important. I don't know if you were here when I was speaking, it's not about one thing or the other. It's one thing and the other.
So these standards, regulatory elements are important and necessary, but they won't solve parts of the problem that are crucial to address the issue. For example, the transparency of the social media companies or the AI companies are demanding them to have human rights-based content moderation and curation. We just need to be careful to say that let's invest in this thing and forget the other. Because it's not going to work.
It's a complex puzzle and we need all the pieces of this puzzle.
But on these standards, we need to be careful when we're talking about the standardized criteria for journalism of getting the other side, this is all fantastic, the best that can happen to climate discussion, it's not activism journalism, it's independent journalism. But independent journalism also means that you can't compare reports of the IPCC that shows with 99% of reliability that we have a problem and put this as if it was equal to the other 1% of people saying that we don't have an issue, right?
I'm in favour that the journalist speak with the others. But also underlining to the reader or to the listener that there is an imbalance here that's not the same. So this is super important.
On the question from the gentleman from South Africa, when you said this is perceived as a White man problem, this is precisely what we want with this initiative and stimulating more research and more investigative journalist from the Global South.
Why this narrative is like that and where is this coming from, what does this impact, because what you are saying here is something I didn't knew. It shows that it's different, the problem, in terms of information integrity in where you are, probably is different in Brazil, different in Indonesia and so on. This is super important on what we're trying to stimulate.
Finally on the data story, we are launching under the Broadband Commission with others a toolkit on data governance precisely addressing these kind of issues. And then on your last question in terms of violence and others against the journalists, et cetera, last year we dedicated the world press freedom day entirely to this discussion. Then we can talk later.
But we produced a roadmap talking with the journalist, the scientist, and how to address this issues of attacks against those voices, those critical voices speaking about climate change and other environmental issues.
Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Maybe quick response from -- yeah.
>> HARRIET KINGABY: I wanted to make the link back as well to I think mainly around the first question, but I want us to give an example of the unhealthy incentives that are linked to some of these issues.
I wanted to take the idea of quality of journalistic standards and how these are being impacted by the, you know, the things we talked about.
We did a piece of research about five years ago and we looked at safe climate content online. So you know, the most robust entertaining shared climate content online.
And we found that actually something like 70% of that content couldn't monetize through advertising. So that means that there's no economic incentive for reputable organizations to use that content.
And it's important that we get advertiser around the table because they're block climate context because they believe it's too risky. It completely disincentivizes the climate information of our time.
We need to get them around the table and reinforce the idea that it's of the utmost importance that they actually go and advertise there because we need better standards.
It's also really important because then the third thing is that the platforms on incentivizing this content, because it's not -- because it doesn't keep -- necessarily keep people on the platforms in the way that they want because, you know, they're after eyeballs and attention and addiction. So it's important that we get the advertisers around the table with platforms go it's incredibly important for us and everyone in this room and you need to do something about it.
And we've seen that create change. Google introduced their first climate disinformation monetization policy because of that dynamic.
So yeah.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much.
>> EUGENIO GARCIA: I'm not trying to answer you will at questions, I'll be happy to discuss some of the specific points that were raised.
But talk to the African colleagues in the audience, I think we need more [?] the Global South to join this effort. We have the global initiative on information integrity and climate change. Some countries from joined.
I remember Chile, Denmark, France, Morocco, Sweden, United Kingdom, several others also expressed interest in joining.
But we need more developing countries as well. And everything that we need is political commitment. Don't ask anything else, but political commitment to join forces to address climate change and information integrity as a package, as something that it's -- we should see this both ways and how we can move forward in this regard.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Absolutely. Thanks. Thank for raising that point.
And turning back to the question, if you could make them short so that we can have some time to respond. Thank you so much.
>> Sure. Good afternoon. My name is [?] I'm from UNHCR. And as you know, UNHCR, we deal with refugees and asylum seekers and these are groups of people that have very limited reliability information especially with climate risks. In a country like Botswana, how you to then think we can practically ensure that people that are exposed to reliable information because in an encampment space I think is a place where misinformation can spread widely.
So what are some of the principal ways that we can combat that?
Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you for the question.
>> Hi, I'm Larry I'm CEO of connect safely which is a Silicon based NGO that educates parents and the young people about various aspects of Internet safety. And we partner with closely with META, Google, Apple, Amazon, and most technology companies in and around Silicon Valley. I'm a former journalist with CBS news and BBC and do a national radio show for CBS. And we work closely with young people. And the one thing that seems to be anecdotally evident is that young people are considered about climate change.
I will pass on before the world is in serious decay, but the young people are going to have to live with it and potentially die with it. Which is tragic.
And I'm trying to figure out in our work, working on Internet safety and working with our youth advisory council, how we can energize those young people and take advantage of their energy and their concern to channel some of their activities in ways that will actually have an impact on decision-makers, policymakers, industry, and government.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. I'm a representative of NGO [?] who has been working on the fact checking and on the digital information literacy and especially in AI literacy.
But very much in the follow-up of the previous person, one of the most promising thing that we did was we were fact checking [?] at the time and as we know, she (background noise) issues very closely and she was mostly right on everything. But of course became a huge campaign, very polarizing and all that.
But I was wondering what have you learned about the [?] case, because she was really empowering the youngsters and perhaps the COVID killed the moment because people were really -- young people were really doing something. Because now they are becoming vegetables with the technology, they're addicted to that one.
But that was something very promising. I wonder has there been the kind of a what could be done different because there's something [?]. Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much. Last question very quickly, please.
>> Hi, this is Jasmine from Hong Kong. So last year I was the national youth representative of the regional conference of youth and also by UN [?] on climate change.
So one thing that I found is it's like a reflection for me in the conference when we were drafting youth statement for the region, we have not considered and thought about information integrity as a problem on climate change when we're drafting the agenda and things.
So for me, my main question, and also a question is, how -- how could we possibly bring this topic into youth, because the thing is our region, the thing that they did not consider, it's problematic enough is because there's a lot of corporate machine and solution for [?] and the thing is, they -- this kind of information has been overflowing and then people believe that the problem have been tackled very well. That's why it's never on the agenda in the youth statement.
So it's -- yeah, just my question. Thank you very much.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much for these brilliant questions on the place of Yankapur in these debates. There's one question online addressed to Fredrick Ogenga and I'll try to sum it up, but basically it argues that if we have such a lack of data, how can we build actual policies in the global majority world. How can we make sure with the lack of data we can build an actual policies.
So we still have eight minutes and five speakers, so maybe we can do a quick roundup. And if you'd like to address, I like the question to the youth, access to reliable information and policy development.
Who wants to go first?
>> GUILHERME GODOI: I can start. On the question of refugees and migration, et cetera, I think the colleagues in the -- but you can add I guess Charlotte, in the UN in Geneva they are doing lots of interesting things on that. But there are interesting lessons learned from the past using radio in refugee camps to debunk these and to stimulate the information sharing, et cetera.
But the essential issue here that I think is very important with this question is that we need to put a lot of focus on groups that are in situation of vulnerability and situation wherever they are. The issues of multilingualism, the special protections that are needed are super important in this conversation.
Regarding the several questions on youth and [?] for those who don't know, I would strongly recommend for you it look into the guardian project called the 89% project.
Which basically is very solid research saying that 89% of the people in this planet do believe that we have a climate problem. The question is why they are not taking action.
And some of our hypotheses are related to this -- to how the disinformation is shifted. It's not any longer about saying there is not a problem, it's much more sophisticated than that.
But we do need to understand the characteristics of this disinformation to then sophisticate our own actions on that and then it comes to the last point I wanted to comment, stealing a bit of the thunder regarding what the panel has produced on the data issue.
The lack of evidence to produce evidence-based policy. So I do this call for action to you, apply to the global initiative, because this is precisely what we want to see. We want to see more data being produced, more information being produced so that we can circulate more information to produce evidence-based policy.
And of course for the donors in the room or online contribute the fund because then we can fund more research and data protection.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: And I think we can thank Brazil for putting the first million in the fund which is very crucial specifically in the funding landscape that we all operate in. So we still have five minutes. Charlotte.
>> CHARLOTTE SCADDAN: Because I want to speak to the excellent question about offline engagement. And I think just to build on what Guilherme was saying about marginalized groups, when we started out on the process of coming up with the global principles, we initially were just going to focus on the digital space. But realize through our global consultations that actually needed to take a much broader approach. There are many people who have inadequate connectivity or no connectivity at all, they can't engage, but are still activate by the disinformation and hate spread online.
But one of the things I touched on in my remarks was, you know, we term community engagement. And this also is really valid not just in terms of the UN's work on refugees, but our work in peacekeeping environments and all over the world that we have to be in communities listening to people, that has to happen face-to-face. And one thing that's important for us all to remember is that we talk about news, we talk about, you know, major influencers, we talk about digital.
Most people are most influenced by the people they know the they're influenced by their pastor, priest, teacher, by their uncle, by their cousin. That is how we can effectively reach people, by identifying those local community voices who are trusted, local community leaders, and you know, sharing reliability information with them so that they can then amplify in a way that's going to be engaging.
I would say that's a really important point about offline.
Just on youth, I'm not a youth anymore, sadly, but we need to engage with youth in a meaningful way. By actually listening to them on an equal footing. Bring them to the table. Not being an adult into a process, but having them integrated from the start. Because there's a lot we can learn from them, they're digital natives and we're not.
Thank you.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Eugenio.
>> EUGENIO GARCIA: Real quick. My final remarks. I agree with the need to engage young people. We have this call to action to respect individuals and organizations to submit proposals on information integrity and climate change. I think we need to build momentum because the COP30 is going to be the combination of these global efforts.
And I'm also planning to I have high-level side events in -- to showcase these initiatives in the is an open invitation to you all here and you on line because the information will be released soon. And we're glad to see that many stakeholders have already expressed interest in sending proposals and will be, of course, available for any follow-up as needed.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much for opening the doors of COP30 also to this community working on information integrity. It's really, really important.
>> FREDRICK OGENGA: I just wanted -- I felt like if I go without responding to that question from I think it's an online audience who asked about where this lack of data, the Global South then what do we do?
Well, this is a challenge that reminds us of a trajectory reality. It doesn't mean that Africans are not climate experts. For example, the [?] community in Kenya, a community that is known for preserving forests, so the capitalistic way of looking at climate interventions really disregards their local wisdom on how to address the climate challenge using a carbon created programs that are more from global nationals as opposed to grassroots up approaches.
So my suggestion would be what are the grassroots approaches that we can find, you know, through primary research.
So as opposed to what we did, because we did a systematic review that's not going to reveal an engaging with local localities so that you can dive into the local knowledge repository to get data that then can inform a practical, more meaningful practical intervention.
And therefore, after you do that, you simply monitor and evaluate and develop literature about it. So that it can guide your interventions going forward. Likely that is what -- that is what is lacking.
So my -- my suggestion would be that we need to look into ways in which we can partner with those who are capable of making us be in a position where we can co-create together and then be able to use locally available resources and infrastructures to come up with data that can bring, for example, greening, just planting trees. How many are we that are doing tree planting or maybe fruit tree planting at the grass root level? We take it for granted.
So it's time we stop taking those things for granted, we document them, and we see how those things can help us in finding our own knowledge and data about where we want to move forward with the problem of climate change.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much.
Harriet, one last --
>> HARRIET KINGABY: I will be very quick and I'll answer the point about young people.
So I talk about these issues quite a lot and the last time I talked about these issues I was on stage after a young woman called Adele Walton who had just written a book. She wrote this book because her younger sister unfortunately took her own life after being served content online through exactly the kind of patterns that I've described that encouraged her to do so.
There's a crisis in the mental health of young people, and that is exacerbated by what is happening to them online. And I got very cross yesterday after a panel, I won't lie, because somebody said we need to wait for regulation around this. And we absolutely do, we need regulation of this space. But people are getting hurt in the interim and we need to do everything we can to move quickly to solve these problems. That includes helping our young people to feel hopeful about the future, releasing them from the systems that are addicting them and pulling them online and helping them [?]
I'll leave you with that. We solve everything we talked about today and we will also go some way to looking at the mental health crisis in young people today.
>> CAMILLE GRENIER: Thank you so much for this last remark. There's a word that comes and Eugenio mentioned (non-English language) I hope I'm pronouncing it right, and really I'd like to take this word because information integrity, as you may have seen today, is a big house and everybody's welcome to bring their own contribution to build that and make sure that we have access to reliable information that protects our youth, that will protect access to facts, journalist, activist from around the world. And really I think that with this global initiative, with the fund, with the call to action, we have a very precious thing that we'll take forward and that will bring to COP and hopefully beyond COP30.
Thank you so much for being with us today and of course we remain available. Thank you.
(Applause)
