Verified for Climate: Taking on the information battle at the heart of our fight for a liveable planet.

By Melissa Fleming

The latest UN climate projection has the world racing towards a disastrous 2.8 degrees of warming. The international community is way off course in meeting the goals of the Paris Accord. Cataclysmic weather events are hitting more people, more often, with every passing year. Yet still some seek to delay action. 

At the heart of our fight for a livable planet lies an information battle, one we ignore at our peril. 

Year after year, the fossil fuel industry has spent huge sums funding think tanks and influencer campaigns to spread distorted stories, conspiracy theories and outright lies. As a result, ill-intentioned actors operate tirelessly across social media, sowing doubt about the climate emergency and its solutions. The spread of lies about climate change, and the apathy they induce, undermine every effort to save our planet. 

We need to match these harmful actions with a new robust and coordinated commitment to turn the tide on denialism, doomism and the narrative of delay before it is too late.

For the past three years, Verified has been delivering transformative communications in a moment of acute crisis, becoming a new model for rapid response communications for the United Nations and our partners. In collaboration with over 300 civil society organizations, governments, media companies and 2500 trusted messengers all over the world, Verified campaigns have shared vital lifesaving information about COVID-19 in real time, flooded digital spaces with accurate scientific content and infiltrated closed groups online to reach the unreachable. We have engaged well over a billion people with lifesaving content to date—delivering measurable results on vaccine uptake, driving an advocacy agenda on vaccine equity and working at a grassroots level to activate hard-to-reach or entrenched communities. 

As the COVID-19 emergency eases, Verified’s tremendous capabilities will be turned to focus on challenging climate mis- and disinformation and addressing information gaps. Through proven behavior and narrative change tactics, robust networks and mass communications efforts at the global, national and local levels, Verified is moving to spur policymakers, governments and people around the world to change the narrative on climate and drive real action.

Watch this space for the official launch of Verified for Climate—and for more information or to learn how you might participate, please email hello@shareverified.com.

For more information on climate action from the UN, visit www.un.org/climateaction