In previous editions…
# 18 In 2026, we still need to build an infrastructure of trust
# 17 How a Single Post Transformed the Climate Debate

Hi, Thais here, writing from Brazil, with my tickets to Climate Week NYC already booked. I’ll be there to talk about three agendas that are shaping both the present and the future: climate communications and advocacy, impact strategy, and information integrity.

Timing matters.

Brazil is heading into elections in October. The world is already looking ahead to COP31. And somewhere along that journey, we’re preparing an important milestone.

Save the date: At the end of October, we’re hosting the 2nd Global Summit on Climate Information Integrity in Brazil, bringing together leaders, organizations, governments, funders, researchers, and decision-makers working to strengthen the information ecosystem. We want to bring more people into the conversation and strengthen the connections that can turn debate into solutions.

If you’d like to join us as a strategic partner, simply reply to this email with a quick hi. I’d love to hear from you.

As extreme weather events redraw the geography of vulnerability in Brazil and around the world - the most recent case being Nepal, where a glacial collapse linked to climate change took hundreds of lives and left more than a thousand people missing - public conversation on social media reveals a troubling disconnect.

Out of every 100 posts about extreme weather events in July 2026, fewer than 4 mentioned climate change, according to a survey by the Information Integrity Observatory in partnership with CAAD. The systemic driver behind these catastrophes remains a supporting character online.

The analysis of the highest-reach posts also showed that, in the face of destruction, El Niño was cited as the sole culprit under the “force of nature” narrative.

• Windstorms in Brazil’s Southeast generated a peak of 49,000 mentions expressing fear and reports of damage on social media. Within that universe, “El Niño” was pointed to as the explanation in 3,900 posts, while climate change appeared in only 957, just 2% of the total.

• In Rio Grande do Sul, heavy rains generated 57,000 mentions. Of these, 5,800 posts blamed El Niño, while 2,300 connected the floods to global warming, 4% of the total.

• Even in international coverage of the wildfires that devastated Europe, which generated 42,000 mentions, the link to climate change appeared in only 1,900 posts, or 4.5% of the total. Many of these mentions were also surrounded by conspiracy theories claiming that the fires had been “deliberately set to push the green agenda.”

It is always worth saying: climate change does not, by itself, explain any single weather event. But it is already changing the frequency, likelihood, and intensity of many extreme events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts. Although this has been clearly established by climate scientists for years, this connection is still rarely present in conversations about these events.

Overall, the climate crisis was invoked in less than 10% of conversations about the extreme events Brazil and the world experienced. El Niño, while a natural and influential climate cycle, has begun to operate in online narratives as a convenient shield, a smoke screen that absolves the historical impact of human action and pacifies the debate through the lens of temporary meteorological bad luck.

The total volume of posts mentioning terms related to climate change declined, but their reach surged.

• An 8% drop in mentions compared with the previous month, totaling 60,460 mentions from 30,520 authors.

• A 34% increase in reach, reaching a potential audience of 98.24 million people.

In other words: nearly half of the country’s population was potentially exposed to conversations about the climate, but may not have realized it.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

We have been talking for quite some time about the cost of lies. It is through this lens - from the perspective of those of us working in communication and advocacy - that we bring you what we have been tracking, so you can think through it with us.

The cost of platform opacity

Digital platforms are still not adequately prepared to protect the integrity of Brazil’s 2026 elections. That is the warning from a new report by the Coalition Against Disinformation (SAD), which included contributions from FALA, where this Information Integrity Observatory was born, and brings together 66 civil society organizations, laboratories, and research centers.

The study analyzed social media platforms, messaging apps, and artificial intelligence tools, identifying gaps in transparency, reporting channels, and policies to address threats ranging from election disinformation to AI manipulation and climate disinformation.

On the eve of a decisive election, it is worth understanding where these gaps are, and what needs to change now. [LINK]

The cost of heat in your life, and in the health care system

Older adults are the fastest-growing population group, and they are also among the most affected by increasingly intense and relentless heat. “In places such as South Asia and the Persian Gulf, warming above 3°C will cause older adults to face unbearable heat continuously, day and night, for three consecutive months.”

I pulled out the findings that struck me most from the study, published in The Lancet:

• Older adults under 1.5°C of warming are at greater risk than younger people under 4°C.

• Each additional degree of warming will expose around 1 billion more people to at least 180 hours, nearly one month, of intolerable heat per year.

• The study identified 13 vulnerable countries where the poverty rate exceeds 50% and at least 10 million older adults - or 80% of the country’s older population - face significant exposure. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Niger stand out.

AI: The cost beyond data centers

A new study found that Big Oil’s use of AI to increase production could generate 3.3 to 13.3 times more climate pollution than the emissions from AI data centers.

In Heated: “Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have already created customized AI or machine-learning tools for fossil fuel companies, helping them increase production.” [LINK]

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier [English and Spanish]

• Work with us - partner with us on impact projects, workshops, trainings, and strategic consulting. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Thais Lazzeri is the founder and director of FALA, a Brazilian impact studio that drives social change through storytelling, communication, and strategy. She is also the creator of Lies Have a Price (Mentira Tem Preço) and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

Rafael de Pino is Operations Manager at FALA – Impact Studio and coordinates the organization’s Information Integrity Program.Operations Manager at FALA and Coordinator of both Lies Have a Price and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

CONTENT LICENSE

The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

I have been listening to the scientist Thelma Krug, then vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for nearly two decades. First, in the newsroom, when I was a reporter. Later, during the filming of the documentary Tomorrow Has Come. This week, we spoke again before I left for Paris to attend UNESCO’s first Global Conference on the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, 2024 to 2033.

The subject was familiar. The context was not.

Thelma spoke about the dismantling of scientific capacity in some countries: funding cuts, the closure of research centers, the erasure of databases and the disappearance of the phrase “climate change” from official documents in the United States — something I also witnessed last year during a fellowship there. In her view, some of these losses may be irreversible.

The question that stayed with me was simple: How do we defend the integrity of climate information when the very production of knowledge is being weakened?

Thais Lazzeri, from FALA, at UNESCO

For the past five years, FALA has worked to understand the social, economic and democratic costs of disinformation. Along the way, as we developed the program Mentira Tem Preço (Lies Have a Price) and, more recently, the Information Integrity Observatory, we came to recognize a dimension of the problem that was largely absent from public debate: the vulnerability of science itself.

Coordinated attacks against researchers. Campaigns to discredit them. Intimidation. Harassment. Barriers to communicating evidence. Declining trust in scientific institutions. These processes are less visible than a false story going viral on social media, but their effects last longer. They undermine a society’s ability to produce reliable knowledge and turn it into public policy.

That realization gave rise to Bertha, a program inspired by the legacy of Bertha Lutz and designed to strengthen what I call the infrastructure of scientific trust: the capacity to analyze attacks on scientists and institutions, expand the circulation of evidence and bring science, communication and decision-making, including public debate, closer together.

Arriving at UNESCO’s conference and finding this discussion at the center of the international agenda was less a surprise than a confirmation.

Over the course of three days, I heard experts describe different facets of the same phenomenon.

The historian Maria Fernanda Rollo, a researcher with the UNESCO Chair on Biodiversity and Conservation for Sustainable Development, reminded us that academic freedom is a basic condition for the production of knowledge. Science was created to serve society, not governments — or corporations, I would add. Without freedom, there is no criticism. And without criticism, there is no science.

The scientist Heïdi Sevestre, a glaciologist and deputy secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, brought a more combative perspective. Public pressure, so far, has not defeated either lobbying or climate disinformation. Future generations, she warned, will not forgive us for moving too slowly, because we already know what needs to be done. Ice, she reminded us, preserves the memory of the choices we make today.

Heïdi Sevestre on the screen, and Maria, third from the left

Marcelo Knobel, executive director of The World Academy of Sciences, drew attention to an equally strategic challenge: creating the conditions for evidence to circulate, be understood and earn legitimacy in society. Science has never been more important to the challenges we face, and never more contested.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

There is a geopolitical dimension to this debate that deserves attention.

We are used to analyzing competition among countries through indicators such as technology, energy, trade or military capacity. At this conference, another strategic asset came into view: trust in science. Political fragmentation, the decline of international cooperation and the intentional weakening of scientific institutions are already having concrete effects on our ability to respond to the climate crisis, protect biodiversity and design public policies grounded in evidence.

Marcelo Knobel

It is no coincidence that one of the central goals of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development is to strengthen the relationship among science, public policy and society, with trust as a structural element of that process. It was in this context that UNESCO endorsed Bertha as one of the official initiatives of the Decade — the only communications program to be included in this international effort.

We received that recognition in the same way we begin every FALA project: by listening.

Because the best answers rarely begin with a brilliant idea. They begin when we pay attention to the questions the world has not yet been able to answer — or the ones we have not yet dared to ask.

And today, few questions seem as decisive as this one: Who protects the conditions that allow science to continue serving the public interest?

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier. [English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams).

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Hi! I’m Thais Lazzeri, founder and director of FALA, a Brazilian impact studio that drives social change through storytelling, communication, and strategy. I’m also the creator of Lies Have a Price (Mentira Tem Preço) and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

And I’m Rafael de Pino, Operations Manager at FALA and Coordinator of both Lies Have a Price and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

CONTENT LICENSE

The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#17 How a Single Post Transformed the Climate Debate
#16 The 6 gears of the new climate disinformation machine

I’m here to tell you about a carefully-packaged lie: a brand new type of disinformation disguised as academic research and funded by parts of Brazil’s agribusiness industry.

Before we go any further, two important clarifications:

1. This isn’t an argument against agribusiness. It’s an argument for information integrity. Sectors that are more essential to the economy and to food security should have an even greater commitment to transparent, evidence-based science. Producers who operate responsibly are harmed when disinformation becomes a business strategy.

2. Why did I refer to only part of the agribusiness sector? Because sweeping generalizations made without evidence are misleading. Not all agribusiness is Agrodemia.

Brazil is world-famous as the leading global exporter of beef and the largest producer and supplier of soybeans. What is less widely understood, however, is that our supply chain of lies has manufactured a brand new, highly profitable, university-approved product.

Food security cannot be built on scientific insecurity. There is a significant difference between defending Brazilian agriculture and defending coordinated efforts which distort scientific evidence. Conflating the two serves only those who want to shield questionable practices. Science should be able to celebrate progress, expose problems, and help set a better course for society without becoming another marketing strategy.

This is what I mean by Agrodemia - the fusion of agribusiness interests with the appearance of academia. In a country where cattle outnumber people, the future of agribusiness will be shaped by more than what happens in the fields. The integrity of climate information is a cornerstone of economic growth, international competitiveness, and food security. The sector cannot allow disinformation to become a liability.

In her most recent report, released in May, the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change, Elisa Morgera, was unequivocal: large food corporations are following the same disinformation and obstruction playbook pioneered by the fossil fuel industry. They are co-opting science to deny reality.

• The global food system accounts for 15% of fossil energy consumption and 40% of the fossil-based raw materials used in pesticides and fertilizers.
  And what about emissions? Just 15 global meat and dairy companies emit as much greenhouse gas as the whole of Germany..

• In Brazil, agribusiness is responsible for 74% of the country’s climate emissions.

• If Brazilian beef were a country, it would rank as the world’s seventh-largest emitter, ahead of Japan, according to a study by the Climate Observatory.

• The UN estimates that governments worldwide provide US$670 billion annually in subsidies to industrial agriculture and fisheries. In Brazil, tax breaks for agribusiness cost the public treasury R$158 billion. JBS led the ranking of companies avoiding taxes, with R$6.4 billion left unpaid.

The future of agriculture will be decided in both the fields of production and the field of information.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

The “Cattle University” and the Magic of Methane

If the sector is responsible for so much pollution, why haven’t we heard about it?

Let’s start to ground this concept with a real-world example. The Meat Agenda, a report published by the Changing Markets Foundation, exposed Agrodemia’s strategy: combine Brazilian interests with an American stamp of approval. It’s a match made in heaven.

AGRODEMIA

Greenwashing in a lab coat. A corporate strategy of funding research centres, university partnerships, and influential academics to produce tailor-made science designed to delay environmental regulation and push legislation through Congress.

One example is the partnership between a major livestock company and the University of Kansas in the United States around GWP*, a controversial metric used to calculate methane’s climate impact. Critics say that, depending on how the metric is applied and presented, it can make livestock’s contribution to climate change appear smaller than it really is, paving the way for claims that cattle production is carbon neutral—or even beneficial for the climate.

One of the leading advocates of this metric, scientist Frank Mitloehner, received nearly US$3 million from a foundation linked to JBS, Cargill, and Tyson Foods to support his research centre. According to the report, Brazil’s Parliamentary Front for Agriculture (FPA) also funded research by the Brazilian Observatory for Research and Innovation in Bioeconomy, an institute sponsored by the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock, to support the industry’s presentation of biogenic methane emissions as “carbon neutral.”

We’ve written about this before in Oii, but it’s worth repeating: the climate disinformation campaign led by the NGO De Olho no Material Escolar has now made its way into the school textbook industry.

Donme’s activities raise an additional concern: its effort to lend scientific legitimacy to content that contradicts the academic consensus on climate change. According to a report by Aos Fatos, the association runs Agroteca, a platform that brings together materials aimed at teachers and students, including one claiming that “methane emitted by cattle would have no connection to climate change.”

These materials are presented as the result of a curated selection carried out in partnership with the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq/USP), a detail highlighted on the website, which may give them the appearance of scientific validation in the eyes of educators and students. When questioned by the outlet, Esalq provided little clarification.

Subscribe now

The Ballot Box, the Dinner Plate, the Hijacked Debate

Why is it so important for this false science, this new commodity of Agrodemia, to be produced? Because it provides the political legitimacy and ammunition necessary for elections and Congress. Disinformation becomes campaign messaging, which eventually becomes public policy.

AGRICULTURAL EXCEPTIONALISM

The tendency to exempt agriculture from environmental and climate regulations applied to other sectors by using the fear of hunger as justification. In plain English: “If you regulate us, you won’t eat.”

One of the biggest disinformation tactics is the claim that agribusiness cannot be regulated, or the world will go hungry. Let’s look at the numbers:

• The largest 1% of food companies control more than 70% of the world’s agricultural land.

• Small farms, which occupy just 12% of agricultural land, produce 36% of the world’s food.

• In Brazil, family farming is the main source of the food that reaches our tables.

A study conducted by NetLab at UFRJ in collaboration with the University of Cambridge analyzed the data transparency of 15 platforms in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. The results are neither good nor surprising: access to data on content and advertising remains limited, inconsistent, and insufficient to allow for independent oversight. In Brazil, the situation is even more critical.

An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled revealed how BP helped shape and promote one of the most influential climate studies of recent decades: Princeton’s “Wedges” study. This case study shows that fossil fuel companies do not need to deny global warming to influence the climate debate. They can also promote solutions such as carbon capture that promise to address the problem without disrupting the core of their business.

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier. [English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams).

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

Hi! I’m Thais Lazzeri, founder and director of FALA, a Brazilian impact studio that drives social change through storytelling, communication, and strategy. I’m also the creator of Lies Have a Price (Mentira Tem Preço) and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

And I’m Rafael de Pino, Operations Manager at FALA and Coordinator of both Lies Have a Price and the Observatory for Information Integrity.

‘CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#16 The 6 gears of the new climate disinformation machine
#15 Climate disinformation in war: why climate became “a later problem”

This edition arrives later than expected. In May, we were caught by surprise when the Mentira Tem Preço community, named after our information integrity program, was unexpectedly suspended from Instagram, owned by Meta. No warning. No notification. One moment, our anti-disinformation video was going viral, nearing 100,000 organic views and bringing in thousands of new followers. The next moment, we were taken offline.

We soon realised we were not alone. Dozens of accounts are, in one way or another, being silenced—from journalists to civil society groups working on climate and LGBTQIA+ issues.

I began bringing these groups together to better understand the situation, exchange lessons learned, and collectively learn alongside fellow organizations. Here, I would like to reiterate the thanks I have already shared privately with Sleeping Giants Brasil and Ctrl+Z.

If you know someone going through this kind of forced digital blackout (or trying to find solutions) please reply to this message with an “Oii!”. We need more of an “ant colony instinct”: lots of people reacting together when a threat appears.

Our account was finally restored on 1 June. We can now share it with you again, and we’ve already published what we learned from the experience. Throughout the entire process of trying to reactivate our community, we never received a human response from the platform. Not once.

Summary:

• This month you’ll be getting a double dose of Oii — stay tuned;

• MTP will soon be expanding to another platform. We can’t be silenced by losing a single channel!

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

How can a single post trigger a global disinformation crisis?

May was the month of Donald Trump in Brazil. And not only because social media fell in love with the “Trump Buffalo”, a buffalo in Bangladesh that escaped slaughter thanks to its uncanny resemblance to the American president’s hairstyle. The story quickly became one of the most-read articles across Brazilian news outlets.

Do you see the resemblance? I’m not so sure.... (image from the internet)

Trump was the flavor of the month in Brazil because he hosted the two leading contenders in the October presidential election in the White House. On May 7, he met with Lula, the current president and frontrunner in the polls. On May 26, he met with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is imprisoned for attempting a coup d’état, and who is second in the polls.

Trump was also a star on Brazilian social media, away from the spotlight, triggering our monitoring alerts several times. This was all because of a post he made on May 16, between his meetings with our presidential candidates. The post amassed 4 million views and was shared by the official White House Twitter account.

Trump’s climate disinformation, shared by the White House’s official Twitter account (@WhiteHouse), had received more than 4 million views by the time this newsletter was published.

Subscribe now

Can a single post change everything?

Friends of the Earth, a partner of the Observatory for Information Integrity, analysed the effects of climate denialism promoted by government figures. After a single post from Donald Trump, the share of climate-denialist comments surged from 6.5% to 48.6%—an increase of almost 650%. In other words, online discussions ended up containing 7.5 times more climate disinformation than before.

In the United States, according to CarbonBrief, Trump’s post was reported as fact by news outlets such as Fox News and the New York Post. Those who study climate disinformation see a direct impact on public perception when these avalanches of disinformation occur.

To any climate scientist, the U.S. president’s message is like a game of “Spot the Difference” between information and disinformation. We’re not climate scientists, but we did some digging to explain everything to you:

• The UN’s “TOP climate committee”, the IPCC, is not responsible for the climate model cited, RCP8.5, and has never said that the model is wrong—let alone “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”;

• RCP8.5 is one of four benchmark climate scenarios, known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), developed in the early 2010s to help researchers explore a range of possible futures. It was never treated by scientists as a forecast of what would happen by 2100, but rather as an extreme scenario designed to assess potential risks;

• Beginning in 2017, scientists started using a new generation of scenarios called SSPs (”Shared Socioeconomic Pathways”). Rather than looking only at greenhouse gas emissions, these models also consider factors such as population growth, economic development, inequality, education, technology, and public policy when projecting different possible futures;

• Scientists continue to affirm that global warming is real, is primarily caused by human activity, and poses serious risks to societies and ecosystems. The fact that one extreme scenario has become less likely does not mean the climate crisis is over or that scientific projections were “all wrong”. In fact, as technology advances, forecasts are becoming more accurate, which makes taking measures to prevent the worst outcomes even more urgent.

The bad news is that none of this matters on the internet, especially to those who benefit from the visibility and engagement generated by denying climate change.

In Brazil, we saw social media platforms (especially former Twitter) flooded with Trump’s disinformation. Below are a few examples.

One of the posts received more than 10,000 views.

Energy Vampires

A new report from Greenpeace Australia warns that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence data centres could increase dependence on fossil fuels, raise greenhouse gas emissions, and place additional strain on already overloaded electricity grids.

We’re already seeing similar concerns emerge in Brazil. More on that soon.

And the impacts aren’t only environmental...

The UN, in partnership with the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), has published a new report with a warning: the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in advertising could deepen the global information integrity crisis. The report highlights risks such as the amplification of disinformation, a lack of transparency in automated media-buying systems, and growing pressure on independent journalism.

Subscribe now

Mapping the Risks

A study on oil spill risks published in the journal Conservation Letters by researchers from ICMBio, the University of Porto, and the Federal University of Bahia found that the area between the states of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte faces the highest risk of environmental impacts in Brazil’s Equatorial Margin. Based on simulations of oil spill trajectories, the study concluded that potential spills could damage seagrass meadows, mangroves, coral reefs, and rhodolith beds—structures formed by calcareous algae.

Long-time readers already know what the main company seeking to operate in the region told the local community, right? Spoiler: absolutely nothing about these risks.

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier. [English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams).

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#15 Climate disinformation in war: why climate became “a later problem”
#14 In the run-up to the elections, fake TikTok accounts a re selling forUS$28 in Brazil

We proposed 5,000 acts for truth in a nationwide mobilization over the past month. The response came back bigger: more than 9,000 (and we’re still measuring impact). This says far less about a campaign and far more about a collective willingness to hold the public debate with integrity—especially when the topic is climate.

Throughout April, one of our actions was to look at COP strategies and lessons learned and bring them down to earth: what can be applied right now, what doesn’t deliver results, what increases impact, and what helps other organizations move forward with more clarity (and less noise). That’s how we arrived at “From COP to the 2026 Elections: insights and strategic pathways to strengthen democracy in a decisive year for Brazil.”

I’m leaving the document here as an open tool. And if your organization needs to understand scenarios, build strategy, produce knowledge, and design narratives with impact in mind, FALA can help.

Subscribe now

If, in global geopolitics, climate has been downgraded to a “deal with it later” problem, in electoral disputes it has taken on an even more dangerous role: that of a convenient enemy.

Climate disinformation is no longer a marginal phenomenon confined to obscure corners of the internet. It has professionalized, gained funding, and more seriously: it has started to shape—and win—elections.

In recent months, I’ve taken part in cross-party forums focused on the elections. Every time I left a meeting, I pushed myself to redraw the mechanism—one that’s already running, but that we still aren’t even responding to.

What recent data and analysis show is that climate denial is now a central tool in democratic erosion. And that changes everything for the 2026 elections.

By cross-referencing emerging global scenarios with Brazilian voter behavior, six gears of this machine become clear:

1. The “denial machine” has reached power (and is celebrating it)

We’re no longer dealing only with scattered lies. What a recent inquiry by Australia’s Senate defined as a “denial machine” has found its moment of political glory. For those who want to understand it in just a few minutes (it’s worth reading The Guardian’s reporting).
The capture of state machinery (such as the attempt by the U.S. environmental agency to renounce its own legal authority to fight climate change, as reported by the NYT) shows that disinformation doesn’t just want to confuse voters; it wants to dismantle regulation from the inside.

2. Attacking expertise as an authoritarian method

In the work we develop at the Information Integrity Observatory and leading the Mentira Tem Preço program, we investigate disinformation as a system: we identify who produces the lies, with what objectives, and how they spread. From there, we generate intelligence and design strategies to weaken circulation and interrupt impact.

This complex and sophisticated gear has layers of structural socioeconomic and cultural problems. I’ll stick to one of them. What makes disinformation spread like a virus across so many different countries? What they have in common are social networks and platforms. But let’s focus on the electoral process.

Why do populist and authoritarian leaders attack the climate agenda?

For Pedro Abramovay and Gabriela Lotta, one explanation is the tension between politics and bureaucracy, mapped in the book A Democracia Equilibrista. They argue there is a dangerous myth that elected politicians can—and should—override the state bureaucracy and the technical-scientific opinions that should ground decisions, whether by ignoring climate science or public health. The goal is to run over “democratic checks and balances” (article in Gama). Climate becomes a preferred target because it demands solutions grounded in facts, science, and the long term—everything that extremist rhetoric, built on chaos and immediacy, rejects.

It’s worth adding a few layers we’ve learned over the years:

• Institutions are the target—but not only scientific ones. Those leading socio-environmental protection, like IBAMA and ICMBio, are attacked precisely for doing their job. In one move, you delegitimize the government, the institution, and everyone who works there—putting civil servants at risk. And you accuse the system, without evidence, of blocking “progress.”

• Climate also holds other unequal-power battles in the Global South: land regulation, directly tied to political and economic interests. On the ground, the lie means insecurity in the countryside, in the forest, and in the city.

• What’s at stake? MONEY, INFLUENCE, AND POWER.

3. The algorithm as an accomplice

This entire institutional offensive finds perfect ground in a sick information ecosystem. As you can see, here we treat lies strategically as a serious infection—sometimes widespread. Whoever catches it has been infected. We need to treat the symptoms, but also the cause.

I spoke about this at an event at Unicamp. Social media platforms run algorithms optimized for engagement, operating 24/7 within the same business model—advertising—and competing for our attention, not for democratic civic values or for truth.

Public thanks for the invitation from Marcelo Knobel, director of UNESCO’s World Academy of Sciences, and Simone Pallone, professor in the Graduate Program in Scientific and Cultural Communication and the Specialization in Science Journalism.

4. The toxic relationship with Big Tech

I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating (I’ll explain why). Lies have become a business against climate action. And business generates profit. This system has a name: a supply chain of lies that uses technology, algorithms, and business models to generate profit or advantage for some group—and to benefit the distribution hubs and professional liars.

A key data point for our mechanism: denialism exists in society, but it is not the majority. The feeling—driven in part by the tsunami of lies—can pull us away from reality. There is a theoretical consensus in Brazilian society that climate change is real and caused by human action. However, affective polarization hijacks the issue: when the debate involves “actors,” climate gets swallowed by “culture wars,” turning into a moral and identity dispute.

One insight I loved: the ICCI document 20 Days for Climate calls this a “toxic relationship”: we become dependent on networks to mobilize, while those same networks roll back efforts to fight disinformation.

The global impact is alarming—see the case in the Australian Senate. In addition, the use of Artificial Intelligence by groups seeking to block climate progress further threatens the integrity of public information.

5. Institutional distrust in the messengers

How do you fight disinformation when voters no longer trust the messenger? Think about it: it’s not about what you say, but about who says it. And then you can either abandon the audience or think of innovative solutions to reach it.

Today, a series of studies shows that the “silent majority” in Brazil avoids political debate out of exhaustion with aggression and deeply distrusts traditional media, turning instead to WhatsApp and YouTube.

We explain here how disinformation loves your hatred:

6. Electoral debate has to occupy the networks

A recent Datafolha survey showed that TV and social networks will compete equally for Brazilians’ attention, within the margin of error of two percentage points. In behind-the-scenes conversations, many confirmed to me that this phenomenon is historic. We need to learn from it.

A quick addendum: Brazilians don’t understand WhatsApp as an information channel. How?! Yep. The answer is in the message’s path: it can be a video, a link… The message arrived from a friend, a coworker, a group of known people, or a broadcast channel they trust. Like letters, messages carry trust in the sender.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

What comes next?
Vaccines against lies

We need to create vaccines, with the mission of immunizing the population against lies—I’ve been dedicating myself to this over the past year.

If disinformation has turned climate into a cultural-war weapon, the response cannot be purely technocratic. The way to pierce denialism at the ballot box is to translate climate urgency from scientific abstraction into the material reality of everyday life. We need to stop speaking in “climate-ese” or acting like an apocalypse outpost and show the direct connection between drought and the price of coffee on the shelf, or between floods and GDP falling.

Paths:

• Think from GDP to your cup of coffee: we need to translate the climate emergency into people’s wallets and daily lives. The drought that makes coffee more expensive—rice, beans, and more—and brings risks to agriculture; the flood that freezes the economy; the environmental disaster that reshaped an entire city and brought public insecurity; the pricier fuel pump because of dependence on oil.

• Include new narrators: we need new local spokespeople, able to break through bubbles and speak directly to faith communities, informal workers, and youth in peripheral neighborhoods.

• Focus on those who still don’t talk to you: the key to the elections isn’t in the poles that shout online, but in disengaged segments. They reject polarization and want pragmatic solutions. Climate communication needs to reclaim shared values, creating a distinctly Brazilian identity that is forward-looking and constructive.

As long as we treat the climate crisis only as an environmental problem, it will keep being swallowed by the lie machine. Information integrity in the 2026 elections will depend on reclaiming climate as an economic, moral, and above all existential problem for democracy.

Information integrity in the transition roadmap from COP

The Global Initiative for Climate Information Integrity—led by Brazil, the UN, and UNESCO—submitted a document to the COP presidency leading the roadmap. The message: climate disinformation blocks policy and public support. In other words: without information integrity, there is no solution.

Habemus Brazilian at the Vatican

Scientist Carlos Nobre was appointed to the Council for Human Development by Pope Leo XIV.

Vitória Régia

In a Brazil of a future that feels too close, the short film Vitória Régia imagines a coup that turns the Amazon into a foreign asset—the “Amazon of America”—and sparks a resistance led by Indigenous peoples, quilombola communities, and traditional communities. At the center, a journalist crosses the forest to break the siege and tell the world what’s at stake. Released by APIB and COIAB, with national and international support, the film blends fiction and political strategy to remind us that the dispute over narratives also determines the territory’s fate—and that without information integrity, even the future can be hijacked. Watch the trailer here!

Subscribe now

No climate transition in agribusiness

A survey by Instituto Escolhas shows that technical assistance and rural extension (Ater) in Brazil is insufficient to face the climate crisis: 80% of the more than 5 million establishments say they don’t receive this support, and in family farming only 18% have access. [LINK Globo Rural]

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier. [English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams).

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#14 In the run-up to the elections, fake TikTok accounts a re selling forUS$28 in Brazil
#13 Would you pay for a lie?

I In Brazil, today is April Fools’ Day, the day of a familiar ritual: make up a story, trick someone, scare them (the bigger, the better), and then reveal the joke. The problem is the logic stayed. And the joke disappeared.

We’re living April Fools’ Day every single day, at an unprecedented scale: faster, wider, and backed by an entire system that profits from it. But what if truth could also operate as a system?

If disinformation scales,
the response has to scale too.

Today we’re launching 5,000 Acts for Truth, a month-long mobilization to turn visibility into concrete action. Not a campaign, but an experiment: how many people does it take for truth to stop being a reaction and become a movement?

Mapping patterns, translating signals, and making visible what circulates in fragments, that’s our act for truth.

This month, the Integrity Information Observatory for Information Integrity turns one year old. It was born from a simple unease: we can’t solve what we can’t see.

That’s our act for truth: a strategic intelligence infrastructure about information, climate, and democracy in the Global South.

In war, climate became “a later problem”, and that isn’t accidental. It’s disinformation.

If geopolitics has moved to the center of the global debate, it’s because it was, intentionally, moved there.

That might sound counterintuitive, but it starts to make sense when you look at what’s actually being fought over: energy, territory, control of resources. In other words: oil.

This reorganization doesn’t erase the climate problem. It just shifts it, and, in l doing so, creates a kind of comfort zone where structural decisions can be postponed without looking like neglect.

“Geopolitics didn’t replace climate change as a major global risk. It’s the same risk, just being treated as a different problem.”

That framing came through clearly in a recent conversation with Elisa Morgera, the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change and human rights and a professor of international law.

The key is how this shift spreads, and, above all, where it stops landing. From that lens, some implications stop feeling abstract.

1) You can’t talk about fossil fuels without an information battle

The First Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels (called the Santa Marta Conference within the climate space), scheduled for the end of this month in Colombia, puts the phaseout of fossil fuels back at the center. But this conversation arrives loaded.

Decades of manufactured doubt, influence campaigns, and economic narratives shaped what now looks like a technical debate. It isn’t. If you don’t treat information integrity as a baseline condition, you risk legitimizing a playing field that was distorted from the start.

“Climate obstruction has turned into armed aggression. It’s all happening exactly where the biggest oil reserves are. And that also creates chaos to avoid, to distract from the hard decisions about fossil fuels, right? It also creates fear and fatalism. But few people see the connection between climate obstruction and current geopolitics.

For many human rights experts, war becomes ‘other human rights issues,’ and climate ‘is put to one side,’ instead of being understood as part of the main reasons for armed aggression and conflict. There’s some attention, which is very important of course, to wars worsening climate change, but not so much about the obstruction of climate action and the logics of the fossil fuel-based economy being part of the causes.”
Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights

2) COP recognition was a starting point. What comes next?

Including information integrity in COP’s official final text marked a meaningful turning point. What’s at stake now is whether that principle will actually operate inside the process.

Here’s what that means: defining criteria, strengthening evidence, and making visible the influences that still remain diffuse. Without that, the topic risks staying correct, and peripheral.

As Brazil steps into a more central role, it enters tougher terrain: helping shape the quality of the conditions under which consensus is formed.

That inevitably depends on choices that begin now, such as:

• integrating information integrity into interim agendas

• aligning international positioning with domestic decisions

• dealing with “transition” solutions that sound good but barely change the trajectory

In the end, the point is less rhetorical than it seems. Information integrity is now on the climate agenda. The fight now is whether it will be able to change structural decisions, push reforms into practice, and confront ambiguities all the way to COP31, or whether it will only accompany them.

Lies have a price.
Truth is running out of time.

If disinformation operates like a system, the response also has to operate in a network, with responsibility.

5,000 Acts for Truth is a call for concrete action at every scale. Every person counts.

Sometimes that lives in the decisions that shape policies, projects, and institutions. Other times it’s in daily life: the conversation you choose to have (instead of avoid); listening to someone who thinks differently, without judgment; working inside your community to connect climate to real life.

Small gestures are infrastructure too. When connected, they stop being individual and become a system. So the invitation is simple:

What’s your act for truth in the space you occupy?

If you do it, share it with us. Tag #5000AtosPelaVerdade and activate others.
Truth doesn’t scale on its own. It needs a network. It needs us.

Oil: A Toxic Relationship

Sadly, most of us have heard this story before: a woman trapped in a relationship, usually with a deeply unimpressive guy, because she no longer believes she can be independent and happy on her own. He insists she would be nothing without him. He distorts reality and manipulates her perception, eroding her self-esteem and causing her to doubt herself.

This behavior is known as gaslighting. A recent study indicates that this is precisely the strategy that the oil industry has adopted, and they’re no longer making any effort to conceal it.

Researcher Nayantara Dutta and the Clean Creatives team reviewed 1,859 advertising campaign materials from four of the world’s largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell — published between 2020 and 2024. Their analysis identified a shift in how these major polluters communicate.

Between 2009 and 2020 — as highlighted in a separate study by Tohoku and Kyoto universities in Japan — these same oil giants invested millions in advertising promoting the narrative that they were allies of the planet. Just look at the increase in the use of terms like “climate change,” “transition,” and “low-carbon energy” over this period:

Source: Li M, Trencher G, Asuka J (2022) The clean energy claims of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell: A mismatch between discourse, actions and investments.

How can we know if it’s all talk and no substance? By following the money. According to the researchers, financial analysis from the same period “reveals a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy.”

What the Clean Creatives study shows now is that the oil giants have stopped trying to convince you they’re the good guys. Their new strategy is to insist that life without fossil fuels is impossible (or, in the language of a toxic relationship, “You would be nothing without me.”). The study details many examples, but let’s focus on one particularly illustrative case: a 2022 Chevron campaign that foreshadowed this trend.

The ad is beautifully shot in black and white. A young girl steps onto a bus (probably diesel-powered) on her way to her future (poetic, right?) as a sweeping, emotional soundtrack plays in the background. A calm voice-over begins on an apocalyptic note: “Energy demands are rising, and the effects are being felt everywhere” Then comes the punchline: “we’re increasing production in the Permian Basin by 15%, and we’re projected to reach one million barrels of oil per day by 2025.” The narrator concludes romantically, “it’s only human to tackle the challenges of today to help ensure a brighter tomorrow”

The feeling that the ads convey now is one of “confidence,” “security,” and “stability.” It’s a playbook that aligns with a broader shift among major investment funds, many of which have openly stepped back from their sustainability commitments, as well as with the energy crisis in the European Union following the invasion of Ukraine. Nayantara, who led the study, explained to us that “With the world in crisis, oil companies are preying on fear around energy security and using misinformation to dominate the market. This gaslighting isn’t just a result of geopolitics — it’s also a response to today’s cultural climate which is ready for a fossil fuel phase-out.”

When these companies speak of a commitment to addressing climate change, they often point to false solutions, such as natural gas and carbon credits. In December 2025, Shell’s CEO popped up on Instagram, stating clearly: “One of the biggest contributions we will make to the energy transition is the growth in our LNG portfolio over the coming years..”

Yes, you read that correctly: LNG. Liquefied natural gas. A fossil fuel, composed primarily of methane, one of the main greenhouse gases. This is, in no uncertain terms, “one of the biggest contributions” to the energy transition. They are, quite literally, gas-lighting.

Subscribe Now

To watch!

The Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation produces a series of mini-documentaries ona YouTube called Vale a Pena Perguntar (It’s Worth Asking). One of our favorite topics, the false dichotomy between climate action and development—that same old socio-environmental disinformation claiming that preservation is the enemy of progress—gets the spotlight in some excellent episodes. It’s absolutely worth watching!

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram.

• Buy our Information Integrity Dossier. [English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams).

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#13 Would you pay for a lie?
#12 Denying climate change is no longer the main strategy. The new strategy is to make you give up on those trying to confront it.

TikTok accounts have a price tag.

We talk a lot about the supply chain of lies. Who finances it, who drives it, and who profits from it. Today, we introduce a new player in that ecosystem: sellers offering TikTok accounts that are “ready to go viral.”

Fake Brazilian TikTok accounts, each with around 10,000 followers, are being sold for approximately R$150 (US$27.49) each. The findings, published in the paid edition of the newsletter Indicator and shared exclusively through the Observatory for Information Integrity network, come from research conducted by our colleague Alexios Mantzarlis, Director of Security, Trust and Safety at Cornell Tech, a leading center for digital privacy and security at Cornell University in New York.

In his research, Mantzarlis identified 788 TikTok accounts listed for sale in Brazilian WhatsApp groups, which effectively serve as a street market for profiles. Most of the accounts were politically oriented and focused primarily on current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former President Jair Bolsonaro – a calculated (and accurate) bet on Brazil’s political polarization.

The profiles above are for sale, according to an investigation by Indicator.

The business model of these “virtual market vendors” is simple: they create the accounts and train the algorithm using controversial topics such as politics (see examples above).

TikTok has been Brazil’s fastest-growing social platform for several years and is now present on nearly half of all smartphones in the country (46%). Among young users, that number climbs to 61%. Its short-form video format was a decisive factor in Brazil’s 2022 presidential elections, according to research conducted by the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), and InternetLab. With this in mind, what can we expect for the October 2026 elections?

Climate disinformation is trending on TikTok.

In November, the Spanish fact-checking foundation Maldita.es analyzed TikTok videos posted during the 2024 floods in Valencia. It found that videos containing disinformation were shared 85% more than other content. Researchers concluded that the platform’s algorithm appears to prioritize content that provokes strong emotional reactions.

These findings echo a Brazilian study published in July 2025 by INCT-CPCT (Fiocruz), which analyzed climate disinformation videos on TikTok. Most adopted a catastrophic tone and relied on conspiracy theories when discussing extreme weather events, including the floods in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state and in Valencia, leveraging fear and distortion to maximize engagement…

Important: TikTok told Indicator that buying and selling accounts violates the platform’s policies and that accounts involved in such transactions may be suspended or permanently removed. The company added that repeated or coordinated attempts to engage in such activity are subject to more severe penalties.

Subscribe now

Hello Brazil (and the U.S.):
Information integrity amid rising electricity bills

More than 155 million Brazilians will be eligible to vote in 2026. But defending democracy doesn’t happen only at the ballot box in October. Every day, we choose what to demand, what not to engage with, and what to ignore. For too long, climate has been relegated to the margins.

Climate determines food prices, water security, energy reliability, public spending, and ultimately our quality of life. That’s why we’ve decided to put an end to the disinformation that shifts the blame onto society, as if everything were simply the result of individual choices. It’s not.

Public policies (or the lack of them) are political decisions. When climate is not made a priority, from disaster relief to long-term adaptation strategies, that too is a decision. When a country decides to increase reliance on a particular energy source, relax environmental licensing requirements, fund major infrastructure projects, or ignore climate adaptation plans, this is not simply “the market in action.” It is a matter of commitment (or neglect) by those elected to lead.

So before anyone claims that rising electricity bills — which, according to reporting by Brazil’s O Globo, are on the way — are “the taxpayer’s fault,” it’s worth examining the facts.

Lower water levels in rivers and reservoirs (due to higher temperatures linked to climate change, intensified by oil companies and parts of Brazil’s agribusiness sector)
+ heavier reliance on fossil fuel–based thermal generation
+ R$47 billion in subsidies to the power sector (ultimately paid by consumers)
________________________________________________________________
= Electricity bills that outpace inflation

An Amazon Web Services data center, in the foreground, under construction next to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Credit: Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press

Let’s add another layer: data centers

In the United States, these enormous, power-intensive facilities are straining the electricity system. A recent New York Times article highlights the multiple dimensions of this complex debate: some proposals would require big tech companies to finance new power plants; others suggest requiring data centers to generate their own electricity, charging them higher tariffs than households, or even freezing new construction altogether. Do we need another formula to understand the consequences of adding more demand to an already overburdened system?

Subscribe Now

Bad Bunny, con cariño!

3 Latin American Lessons to fight disinformation with Bad Bunny
You should take more “screenshots” of what is true — before the system deletes it.

10 solutions

The most recent report by the Forum on Information and Democracy, led by Brazil and Armenia, sets out ten priorities to address climate disinformation. Among them is the integration of information integrity into climate governance frameworks. The report incorporates data from our Observatory and underscores a point we consistently defend: change at scale depends on strengthening the broader information ecosystem.

“It won’t leak…”

It did. A total of 18,000 liters of drilling fluid spilled during exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River, according to reporting by Germany’s DW. The warning signs were there — we listed them all in August of last year.

No safeguards

Public human rights commitments from wind and solar companies remain alarmingly weak. A new report from Nordeste Potência and ClimaInfo finds that only seven of the 34 companies evaluated surpassed 50% of the international benchmarks analyzed. Most fall short on consistent due diligence, fail to outline effective grievance mechanisms, and do not even clearly acknowledge the right to water.

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram: [link]

• Download our Information Integrity Dossier (free): [link - English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams): [link]

• Advertise with us. More information at: producao@fala.art.br

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#12 Denying climate change is no longer the main strategy. The new strategy is to make you give up on those trying to confront it.
#11 Climate disinformation: who tried to FLOP COP30 but didn’t stand a chance

Would you pay for a lie?

That was the first question I asked on the TEDx stage, speaking about information integrity and climate. The truth is hard: a lot of people pay. And they pay dearly.

Climate disinformation has stopped being noise, a mistake, or a deviation. It’s become a business. A global industry that generates profit, power, and political advantage, hile destroying trust, freezing decisions, and pushing us further away from solutions.

The TEDx Belo Horizonte stage was the place to name that system. The Observatory for Integrity Information, part of our Lies Have a Price program, exists to do the hard work that comes after the stage: producing intelligence, widening the room for action, and supporting decisions in complex contexts.

Watch the TEDx Talk—the first one on information integrity and climate

What we learned
(and why this is decisive now)

After a year analyzing patterns, data, and critical moments in the climate debate, the conclusion is straightforward: climate disinformation operates as a strategy of power.

It doesn’t emerge to confuse people in a vague, diffuse way. It emerges to delegitimize solutions, weaken institutions, and reshape the political landscape in favor of clearly defined economic and ideological interests.

The pattern is consistent: when trust collapses, action disappears.

This system has matured. Disinformation is no longer cartoonish. It’s become sophisticated, profitable, and politically functional. It circulates through accounts that look institutional, adopts technical or journalistic language, and benefits from platforms designed to reward engagement, ot truth. The problem sits at the center of public debate.

And the main target isn’t individuals. It’s institutions.

Governments, science, universities, the press, public policy, and multilateral agreements are in the crosshairs because they uphold collective decision-making. In election years and moments of heightened attention, attacks intensify. Treating this as a clash of opinions is a serious mistake. This is about governance, democracy, and the right to life.

That’s why this moment is decisive. In a context of climate emergency, elections, and geopolitical realignment, information integrity is no longer a niche issue. It has become a prerequisite for climate action to work.
Without trust, there is no transition. Without integrity, there is no legitimate decision.

Because we can’t design solutions for what we can’t see.
Now that you’ve seen it, what will you do?

Oii in practice

Oii is the intelligence arm of the Integrity in Motion program (launching in 2026!). We work where disinformation really operates: in decision moments and spikes of attention that shape policies, reputations, and possible futures.

We do that through:

• Ongoing monitoring and strategic alerts (tracking, reports, risk analysis).

• Response and strategy in critical moments (crises, votes, summits, elections).

• Influence and scale (events, convenings, and public reference products).

If you want to fund information integrity as infrastructure and build partnerships in 2026, reply to this email.

Subscribe now

There’s a wolf (and a lobby) in the henhouse

COP30 has come and gone — you already read about it in the latest edition of Oii — but our friends at the Observatory for Information Integrity haven’t slowed down. Toward the end of last year, they published a lot of interesting work that we didn’t get a chance to cover here. The main theme was the enormous influence of oil companies on climate discussions in Brazil.

For example, the wonderful teams at Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) and ClimaInfo analysed data from the Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science at the University of Exeter in the UK. They found that the world’s largest oil companies poured huge amounts of advertising money into Brazil in 2025, especially in the months leading up to COP30. Take a look…

The climate conference took place in November, and the number of ads skyrocketed between July and October, when oil and gas companies began flooding the internet with greenwashing, according to the researchers’ report. More than 80% of these companies’ Google Ads appeared during that period. And the overwhelming majority — 665 ads, or 70% of the total — came from Petrobras, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

This online persuasion effort was also reflected in the corridors of the event in Belém, in northern Brazil. The coalition Kick Big Polluters Out recorded a record-breaking 1,602 oil-industry lobbyists among accredited attendees at COP30. If they were a country, they would have formed the second-largest delegation at the conference, behind only Brazil, the host nation.

But greenwashing by oil companies goes well beyond lobbying and social media advertising. The true picture is even more troubling, as shown in a report by our Norwegian friends at Klimakultur. One chapter of this report focuses on Brazil and is written by journalist Juliana Aguilera. It helps explain why so little — if anything — is said about the oil industry’s soft power in the country. In practice, what does this “soft power” really mean?

You’ve probably noticed that major film, literature, theatre, and sports festivals receive substantial funding from oil and gas companies. If not, start paying attention now. The Klimakultur report shows how these companies occupy central spaces in Brazil’s cultural and institutional life, helping to normalise their presence and dampen public conflict over their climate and environmental impacts.

When lies hit the airwaves

We’ve been teasing this for a while now — remember the study on climate disinformation broadcast on radio and TV in France and Brazil? You, our loyal reader, may recall at least two mentions in previous editions. We were excited. Now we have good news: our friends at QuotaClimat have finally published the results! And yes, there’s plenty of data from the Observatory for Information Integrity in there too — feel free to take pride in that with us. ;)

We recommend reading the full report, but here are two big spoilers from QuotaClimat’s findings: (1) 70% of the climate disinformation identified on radio and TV in Brazil came from Jovem Pan; and (2) the main themes were agriculture and deforestation, COP30 and climate action, alongside electric vehicles and bioethanol.

Disinformation is organized, and so is the response

• Follow Mentira Tem Preço on Instagram: [link]

• Download our Information Integrity Dossier (free): [link - English and Spanish]

• Book a keynote or workshop (events and teams): [link]

• Subscribe to this newsletter if you didn’t receive it by email:
  

  Subscribe now

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#11 Climate disinformation: who tried to FLOP COP30 but didn’t stand a chance
#10 Lying has become a business. And it’s making billions

Undermining Trust in Institutions and Governments Has Become the Most Effective Strategy Against Climate Action

The climate crisis is no longer being denied. It is being discredited. The new strategy against climate action is to prove that no one has the credibility to confront it.

In the two weeks following COP30, we conducted a thorough analysis of all social media content, cross-referencing data and content. In total, there were more than 915,000 mentions, with an estimated reach of 2.58 billion views. The numbers are striking, but they shouldn’t distract us from the strategy shaping the conversation. Was it about the COP? Yes. But not at its core. What was really at stake were the 2026 presidential elections.

Let’s look at the numbers: among the most widely shared posts about the COP, one in three contained disinformation. The dominant narratives portrayed the summit as a government failure, a corruption scandal, or proof of the supposed hypocrisy of the climate agenda. Different angles, same subtext: “you can’t trust anyone who talks about climate.”

This disinformation was based on real events taken out of context, exaggerated and used to support a ready-made narrative. The protest by some members of the Indigenous movement, the fire in the Blue Zone, and the construction work and public spending on the conference were all used to fuel the disinformation supply chain.

Much like the “Upside Down” in Stranger Things, the disinformation created a parallel universe where facts are rearranged to always reach the same conclusion: the government failed, and the COP flopped.

Data from our Observatory for Information Integrity (Oii), produced in partnership with CAAD’s research unit using the Brandwatch tool, shows that, of the 700 most widely circulated posts, 227 were misleading. These posts represented 35% of the highest-reach debate about the world’s main climate event, which was hosted in Brazil.

Misleading posts achieved high reach and engagement. They spread through anonymous accounts, public figures, politicians, influencers and outlets that resembled legitimate journalism. The lines between lies, opinion and information became increasingly blurred.

Subscribe now

LESSON #1

Disinformation is not just a matter of telling lies; it’s a deliberate attempt to misrepresent reality.

It is easier to hijack reality than to lie about the climate crisis. At COP30, almost nothing that went viral was completely fabricated. Real facts were transformed into evidence for a ready-made narrative.

This tactic is sophisticated, dangerous, and reveals a level of maturity in Brazilian disinformation that is still widely underestimated.

LESSON #2

Climate disinformation is, at its core, political disinformation.

The debate was not about climate; it was about power. During periods of heightened attention, the conversation became increasingly negative and politicized while paradoxically addressing climate policy less and less.

COP30 was used as a pretext to attack the government and as a means to undermine future climate action.

LESSON #3

The most dangerous climate disinformation is the kind that looks like journalism

Climate disinformation spread via the profiles of public figures and media outlets that appeared journalistic. This challenges the comfortable belief that “disinformation only comes from the fringes.” The boundary between disinformation, opinion and media has become blurred. When lies adopt journalistic language, they gain institutional reach.

LESSON #4

Repetition beats impact

Anyone with kids knows how this works — persistence wins. The numbers can’t be explained by a single post, but rather by continuous repetition of words such as “flop,” “embarrassment,” and “hypocrisy,” as well as reframed facts and performative outrage.

COP30 showed that climate disinformation is not only used to confuse. It is also used to delegitimize, demobilize, and erode trust, which are core ingredients of any electoral contest.

Understanding this concept is not merely an academic exercise. It is a basic requirement for thinking about media coverage, strategy, and responses in the coming years. Whoever controls trust controls the future of politics.

Over the past five years, information integrity has finally returned to its rightful place as a fundamental condition for climate action. This idea has made its way into public debate and negotiations and is now included in the final COP document, which has been endorsed by countries and supported by a global initiative launched by Brazil in partnership with the UN and UNESCO.

Here’s our short video recap of the year. Take a look!

• Oii was launched in April at the Climate Information Integrity Summit, organized in Brasília in partnership with CAAD and CAN. What started as an initiative shared with a small network of partners has grown into more than five hundred individuals and organizations connected around a shared purpose, moving forward together and reinforcing one another. It was at this event that the Brazilian government committed to placing the issue on the official COP agenda. One day later, the Brazilian chapter of the initiative was formally launched.

• In nine months, Oii became a key reference and trusted source, featured in more than thirty media stories across eleven countries, including Brazil.

• This momentum was also driven by Oii’s partner community. Mentira Tem Preço has taken shape as a transformation network, reaching more than 1.3 million people in 2025 — 500,000 of them during COP alone.

• We also took Oii to the TEDx stage (more on this coming soon!) and to COP30.

• To further build trust and expand impact, we produced the first trilingual dossier on the issue (Portuguese, English and Spanish), with Oii readers receiving early access.

For this reason, this message of thanks is also a milestone. In 2025, by working in an integrated way across policy, engagement, media literacy and knowledge production, we proved that it is possible to build an ecosystem that rewards truth, strengthens decision-making and communities, and better prepares us to protect the future we want. Sharing this journey renews our energy for the cycle ahead. Thank you for being part of it.

See you in 2026!

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#10 Lying has become a business. And it’s making billions
#9 COP30 starts here: the cost of climate lies

Oii (Hi!), from COP30 (again), where by now no one has any doubts: safeguarding climate information integrity is key to making climate action work.

A lot of people stopped me in the halls of Belém to ask whether, five years ago, when I created Lies Have a Price (‘Mentira Tem Preço’) to expose the cost of the supply chain of climate lies, I ever imagined we’d make it onto COP30’s official agenda. And the answer is: I did imagine it. Or better: ÉGUA! My favorite expression from Pará, said with all the affection it deserves.

Seeing history change while you’re part of the solution is what keeps me going.

For the first time, climate information integrity entered COP’s official agenda, with a Brazilian special envoy: Frederico Assis. The opening came with a speech by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stressing the need to deliver “a new defeat to climate deniers.” One week later, the UN Secretary-General stated: “There can be no climate action without information integrity.”

The second achievement was also unprecedented: a collective movement involving hundreds of people and organizations from science, technology, grassroots leadership, journalism, advertising, health, and the socioenvironmental and private sectors. This ecosystem understood that climate disinformation affects us all. That’s why they came together to demand concrete solutions, formalized in an open letter published by CAAD on November 12. It was powerful to open this conversation inside the COP with so many committed people.

Subscribe now

The third breakthrough was the launch of the Declaration on Information Integrity, with João Brant (Brazil’s Secretary for Digital Policy), Charlotte Scaddan (senior UN advisor), Guilherme Canela (UNESCO director) and representatives from the new signatory countries. The document is clear: countries commit to promoting information integrity at every level — international, national, and local — while respecting human rights and the principles of the Paris Agreement.

As Brant announced the new signatories, his phone kept buzzing. Two more countries had just joined. Total at that moment: 13 committed nations.

The fourth achievement is ours: we launched the Climate Information Integrity Dossier, in three languages (Portuguese, English, and Spanish), in both digital and print formats. The dossier reveals the cost of the climate-lie supply chain and highlights an essential point: the new wave of climate denial is economic.

Download Here!

(Side note: the COP president himself, André Corrêa do Lago, said exactly that in an interview with TV Brasil.)

The fifth achievement was witnessing a wave of integration around this agenda: more than 100 panels and activities with partners discussing information integrity — on social media, in action plans, in ongoing projects, in conversations, and on COP stages.

Ship’s log: millions of people pulled into the daily stream of climate lies at COP

After coffee came the lie of the day. Sounds like a joke, but that’s really how our mornings started. And the numbers were influencer-level. By the 17th, we had logged 171 disinformation posts in nine days, each one reaching an average of 300,000 people. The peak came on Day 2, when climate lies reached a combined 17 million.

And speaking of posts: what do most of the top-performing COP posts have in common?

(We’ll get to that.)

The hashtag FLOP30

The anti-COP campaign even had its own hashtag: FLOP30 - 'Flop' means failure.

Rafa stepping in to explain Brazilian internet teen slang - feels like.

Not every disinformation post used FLOP30, but almost every FLOP30 post had disinformation. It’s an old tactic, and definitely not a Brazilian invention. Climate deniers have been calling COP a “flop” on social media since at least COP26. And again at COP27, COP28, and COP29.

This was another finding from the Observatory for Information Integrity (Oii, remember ;), in partnership with a CAAD researcher. Every day, she tracked the 50 most-viewed posts about COP30 and, using our Reference Guide, flagged which ones contained disinformation tactics.

The Lie-O-Meter blew up on the 11th: 17.9 million total reach

On Day 2, the main theme of the lies and distortions was an Indigenous protest at the entrance of the Blue Zone, the official restricted area where negotiations take place. Of all the top-viewed posts that day, 46 percent were filled with lies or misleading narratives made to engage easily.

The targets: Indigenous peoples and activists.

Each post averaged 750,000 impressions and around 30,000 likes and comments. Average, okay? Not the total. The tactics repeat, and so do the prejudices: latching onto whatever is trending to claim Indigenous people are manipulated, or to link activism to terrorism.

TRUMP

Day 10: 8.7 million total reach

The big engine of disinformation on the first day of the conference was a message from former U.S. president Donald Trump about a story you’ve seen here before: the road that was never built for COP, but that keeps being used as bait. Of the 50 most-viewed COP posts on Day 10, 18 contained disinformation, with an average reach of nearly 500,000 per post.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz

A rough day, and not just for German diplomacy. Almost half of the top posts contained disinformation tactics. Combined reach: 3.6 million. The lie of the day claimed there was a “global feeling” that COP was a total disaster.

Aldo Rebelo

He owned the spotlight. The former congressman posted stories we’ve mapped countless times: that NGOs “control” the Amazon as if it were under siege, even though we know what actually expanded there was organized crime. And that conservation is the enemy of progress. Straight-up stenography journalism never helps. Guess what happened? A great video to heat up a dead Sunday on social media.

The price of the coxinha

Days 8 and 9: 8.8 million total reach.

Did you see that? The story about overpriced food in the Blue Zone became a stage for two politicians, Congressman Rogério Barra from Pará (PL) and Senator Cleitinho Azevedo from Minas Gerais (Republicanos), to make baseless accusations about the event’s food-service contract. Barra’s Instagram post reached 578,000 people and Cleitinho’s reached 425,000. Both had more than 20,000 likes, comments, and shares.

Back to the question: looking across the posts, what did most screenshots have in common?

The bait: warnings about scandal, terrorism, or corruption, without evidence.

Who: politicians (current, former, and aspiring), Revista Oeste, and Brasil Paralelo.

The reputation layer: lots of blue verification badges on Meta and X.

Stop everything. Pause for a moment. Before you like, comment, or share anything, remember this: there’s one thing that can either uphold or destroy every conversation and solution about the climate agenda: lies. This topic has gained such importance that, for the first time ever, it’s part of the official COP agenda. It even appeared in President Lula’s opening speech at COP30, where he urged all of us (yes, we’re here in Belém) to “inflict a new defeat” on climate denial.

Lies are a business. And business means profit. We need to stop pretending that disinformation is an accident.

This changes today!

We’re releasing the ebook
Climate Information Integrity: How to act now to ensure the success of the climate agenda

Download Here!

Baixe Aqui!

Descargar Aquí!

This work is the culmination of FALA – Impact Studio’s journey, from Mentira Tem Preço (“Lies Have a Price”), our global program on climate information integrity, to our more recent initiative, Oii. And, without a doubt, none of this would have been possible without the collective effort of a network of people — in Brazil and beyond — who truly believe in change.

Download Here!

Here’s what you won’t want to miss:

• How we can “inflict a new defeat” on climate deniers NOW.

• How the supply chain of lies is structured, and how much money is involved.

• A timeline of lies - they didn’t come out of nowhere.

• Why doesn’t the truth go viral?

• The map of climate disinformation in Brazil: cross-sector issues ranging from agriculture and public health to environmental policy, indigenous rights, faith, gender, and race.

Download Here!

This is a call to action. Those of us who care about climate change make up 89% of the population. We are the majority. It is time we started acting like a majority, demanding accountability like a majority, and defending the right to trustworthy information like a majority.

Promoting information integrity is the key to the success of the climate agenda.

Will you join us?

I look forward to seeing you there,

Thais Lazzeri

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#6 COP Disinformation Hits Record High
#5 COP30: The New Climate Denial Is Economic

You asked for it, so we went ahead and did it:

Next week, subscribers to Oii (the Observatory of Information Integrity) will get an exclusive first look at the brand-new e-book from FALA Impact Studio, published especially for COP 30. It will be available first to members of this network, because we believe in the integrity of information as a tool for change and the key to the success of the climate agenda.

We’ve spent more than five years on the ground with Mentira Tem Preço (“Lies Have a Price”), tracking the steep cost of climate misinformation across different territories, networks, and contexts. The result is a powerful portrait of this supply chain of climate lies.

This e-book is essential reading for anyone working on climate issues, which intersect with so many other areas, as well as for those working in communication and public policy, both during COP30 and beyond. It explains how disinformation evolved from background noise to a tool of power, fueling an ecosystem driven by influence and profit. That’s why we created Oii and now this e-book: no one can design solutions for what they can’t see.

A sneak-peek of what’s ahead:

• The cost of lies: disinformation as the new form of climate financing;

• The supply chain of lies: who makes them, who profits, and how disinformation moves swiftly between global, national, and local contexts, shaping decisions and distorting solutions;

• The map of climate disinformation in Brazil: the routes, patterns, and real impacts of a network working 24/7 to delay solutions, attack people and institutions, and rewrite the rules of the game.

Share

We’ll be launching the e-book in the Blue Zone, Green Zone, Casa do Povo, and the FreeZone. Printed editions will be available in Portuguese, English, and Spanish (by popular demand!). We’ve got a full and fun schedule, just how we like it, but we’ll always make time for those of you in this network!

ON TELEGRAM
Lies about COP30 share space with anti-vaccine posts, anti-woke rants — and even aliens

A new analysis by the Observatory of Information Integrity (Oii), in partnership with Desinfopop/FGV, reveals that the climate conference has become a recurring topic in Brazilian Telegram groups devoted to conspiracy theories — the same spaces which spread lies about “globalism,” the “anti-woke agenda,” anti-vaccine claims, flat Earth theories, and even aliens (nope, you didn’t misread that).

Since January 2025, our monitoring has identified over 285 mentions of COP30, generating 158,000 views. The posts attack the conference itself, the host city of Belém, and climate solutions more broadly. They follow recognizable patterns of disinformation, ranging from conspiracy theories to attempts to discredit Brazil’s leadership in global climate discussions.

The most widely shared messages can be grouped into a few main disinformation tactics:

• Spreading lies about the fact that COP will be held in Belém, mocking the city’s infrastructure or questioning supposed misuse of public funds, with zero evidence, of course. Even The Economist got caught in the crossfire (sorry, friends!). But by now, you probably know that story.

• Claiming that the entire agribusiness sector (their generalization, not ours!) is the victim of a smear campaign. The fact is, agriculture and livestock are Brazil’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Is every part of the agribusiness industry responsible? No.

• Attacking Ibama (The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), linked to the Ministry of Climate and Environment, which enforces environmental law and implements national environmental policies at the federal level. Take note: attacking regulatory bodies, implementing agencies, and the policies themselves is a strategy to push the exploitation agenda. Why? Because it leaves society with the impression that we have too many laws, and that these institutions slow progress and unfairly punish certain sectors.

• Portraying civil society organizations as villains, including a direct attack on our partners at the Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory).

  

Subscribe now

CLIMATE WEEK IN NEW YORK
A path to strengthen information integrity

During Climate Week in New York, information integrity ran through every conversation and emerged stronger at the United Nations General Assembly. What had once been an abstract debate became an urgent, practical priority at the Climate Solutions Dialogue, co-hosted by Brazil, the UN Department of Global Communications, and UNESCO.

The need to create actionable, scalable guidelines capable of strengthening information ecosystems amid digital disorder brought together leaders, researchers, and communicators from different countries for an open, cross-border dialogue at the UN. At their invitation, I represented Brazil alongside other CAAD partners.

It was an intense gathering, full of perspectives, insights, questions, and shared responsibilities. And a call to action: the need to access guidance that strengthens the global information ecosystem.

The outcome of this meeting — and of other discussions at the General Assembly — has just been published: “From Principles to Practice: Strengthening Information Integrity” — a reference document that translates principles into concrete actions, aimed at those shaping public policy and building safer, more resilient, and more ethical information systems. As I always say: strengthening information integrity means strengthening democracy itself. This material is an open call to action for all of us. Sharing this knowledge is how we continue to build the future of information protection together.

While the Amazônia Live festival was in full swing, complete with a giant vitória-régia stage and Mariah Carey as the headliner, the numbers tell a very different story. A recent MapBiomas study revealed that mining in the rainforest has increased by more than 1,000% over the past 39 years, with direct impacts on forests and Indigenous lands — and Vale has played a major role in that surge.

Some people don’t erupt, but they constantly spew smoke and try to cover up real science. Volcanoes are being used to spread false claims about climate change: the images are shocking, but the disinformation isn’t surprising. We break it down in one of our latest carousels!

Who is obstructing your climate?

We will talk a lot more about this incredible project during COP, but here is a heads-up and a link: two dear friends of Oii, the incredible Carlos Milani (IESP-UERJ) and J. Timmons Roberts (Brown University), have just released a book on climate obstruction with the world’s leading experts on the subject. They tell you who is on the front lines trying to block or delay climate action (spoiler: some very powerful names, people and companies, that you often read about here).

Climate disinformation and the law

“Climate denialism is not mere political rhetoric; it undermines fundamental rights, creates legal uncertainty, hinders investment, and jeopardizes the survival of millions of people. Given the severity of the crisis, denying climate change means denying science, denying the law, and denying the very future of humanity on the planet,” in Consultor Jurídico.

Climate lies on radio and TV?

Other CAAD partners have just published a report monitoring disinformation spread on television and radio in France. BUT... with a little help from the team behind Oii (of whom we are very proud), QuotaClimat has released its first findings on climate lies on radio and TV in our beloved Brazil! It even includes data from our Observatory! Go check it out and say “oii!” from us. ;)

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#4 How does a lie become law?
#5 COP30: The New Climate Denial Is Economic

Just hours after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared to the world that “this is the COP of truth,” we joined the High-Level Solutions Dialogue on Information Integrity on Climate Change, convened by the UN, Brazil, and UNESCO. The mission: to discuss solutions for climate information integrity — and how to confront the challenge with urgency, courage, and collaboration.

The supply chain of lies works like a global franchise with local branches. Tactics are transnational: lies, talking points, and formats travel across countries; disinformers feed off each other; platforms provide scale. We’ve seen direct imports of falsehoods such as “globalists” and “deep state,” along with anti-COP movements, as well as “locally accented” disinformation tailored to the Brazilian context. Global problems demand urgent global responses.

The most repeated points here:

• The cost of disinformation — and how it is monetized

• The concentration of power and money, including the advertising market

• Threats against stakeholders, environmental defenders, journalists, scientists, and other professionals and leaders

• Greenwashing

• Litigation

With only 50 days remaining until COP30, the spread of climate disinformation has doubled. Keywords related to the global conference appeared 14,000 times alongside words like “disaster,” “joke,” “catastrophe,” and “failure”. This represents a 267% increase compared to July.

This data survey, carried out by the Observatory of Information Integrity in partnership with Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), was published exclusively by reporter Gabriel Gama in the Folha de São Paulo.

Short videos, criticism, angry comments… all fueled by lies. Of the 100 posts about COP30 over the past month, 30 contained lies or disinformation tactics identified using the Climate Disinformation Reference Guide, produced by FALA Impact Studio and CAAD.

That’s why we always say that internet users (or consumers) aren’t responsible for this mess; it’s all the fault of the supply chain of lies.

To illustrate this, let’s play a game!
Can you (the internet user!) spot the difference between truth and lies in this story? The second most-viewed video in August, which reached 1.9 million people, shows an elegant woman—supposedly a business executive—walking through alleys and side streets—supposedly in Belém—to reach her destination—supposedly her accommodation for COP30, at the outrageous price of 300,000 reais per week. It’s shocking, right?

Subscribe now

DISINFORMATION TECHNIQUE #1:
Taking a Real Video out of Context

REACH: 1.9 million
ENGAGEMENT: 23,000
SOURCE: CAAD, with data from Brandwatch

Here’s the thing: the video itself is real, but the woman in it is not a businesswoman, she is not in Belém, and she likely won’t attend COP30. According to the Observatory for Information Integrity, confirmed by the Folha de São Paulo: “The landscape reveals that the original footage was filmed in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and not in Belém. One segment of the video shows Narikala Fortress, a medieval structure dating back to the 4th century.”

DISINFORMATION TECHNIQUE #2:
The Time Machine

With a cell phone in her hand, a tourist shows the unsanitary surroundings of the Ver-o-Peso market in Belém, the city hosting COP30, and expresses outrage at the number of vultures in the area. The video is indeed from Belém and was made by a tourist…but it’s two years old!

REACH: 2 million
ENGAGEMENT: 18,000
SOURCE: CAAD, with data from Brandwatch

“But who’s to say it’s not exactly the same now, Ms. Oii?” asks a fictional reader I imagined, conversing with the newsletter in a slightly formal tone.

Relax, my dear fictional reader. According to a July report by the Folha de São Paulo, the Ver-o-Peso market is “in the process of revitalization, including renovations to the 168 stalls in the main market, with new canvas coverings, lighting, paving, and a fire prevention system.” The renovations also cover “sanitation of the whole complex.”

DISINFORMATION TECHNIQUE #3:
Artificial Intelligence

REACH: 460,000
ENGAGEMENT: 5,600
SOURCE: CAAD, using Brandwatch data

“This is the Belém of COP30 that they want to hide from the world,” says a reporter standing knee-deep in floodwaters in the capital of Pará. But…none of it is real! The reporter doesn’t exist, the people don’t exist, the flood doesn’t exist, and the city doesn’t exist. The only thing that does exist is the abundance of angry comments against the politician mentioned in the video and against the climate conference in Belém, on X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok.

It’s worth noting how the social media platforms responded to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper’s invitations to comment on this story: “Meta, which controls Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube just sent links to their general disinformation policy pages, which make no mention of climate issues. LinkedIn did not comment. X and Reddit did not respond.” Do they seem at all concerned?

Oii made the news…

Our monthly roundup of the lies being spread about COP30 — the same one you always read here — inspired a great story by journalist Gabriel Gama in Folha de S. Paulo. We might be biased, but it’s really good. Go check it out!

… and hit TV too!

The shocking numbers we uncovered also turned into an excellent piece on TV Cultura, by journalist Henrique de Jesus. Besides our own Thais, the report featured Letícia Capone, director of Instituto Democracia em Xeque, and Nina Santos, Deputy Secretary for Digital Policies at Brazil’s Federal Government Communications Secretariat. Don’t miss it!

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions…
#3 Who profits from climate lies?
#4 How does a lie become law?

Oii (and a big thank you) straight from Climate Weeks in São Paulo and Rio: we’re now over 1,000 in this community, both in Brazil and beyond.

If this were an open letter to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and to COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago, we would say:

• All climate action depends on the integrity of climate information. This is an inescapable fact.

• And no, Al Gore, what we’re experiencing is not just a “very strange moment,” as you said during your recent trip to Brazil. The COP is being targeted. Twenty of the most-viewed posts in July contained lies and reached 834,000 people. These figures are from our partnership with CAAD (Climate Action Against Disinformation), via Brandwatch, in July (see our Climate Disinformation Reference Guide). These posts mainly focused on the housing crisis in Belém, Pará, and used it as a pretext to spread lies and attack COP30 without evidence.

• Climate disinformation is a strategy to block solutions. The economy, and therefore COP30 itself, is at the very heart of the decisions that can no longer be postponed, including the transition to new business models (and their impact on oil-producing countries), resources for adaptation and mitigation measures (and who pays the bill), and the adoption of regenerative agriculture (agribusiness in Brazil is the biggest contributor to global warming).

We have already seen a "test run" of this supply chain of economically-biased climate lies in Brazil. A notable example of this was the last election in the Legal Amazon region. Someone who has worked in the region for decades told me in shock that they had never seen climate disinformation influence the ballot box like this before. And what was this influential lie? The idea that environmental defenders and NGOs want to prevent people in the north from prospering. The effects of this lie were evident in the vote.

The COP president’s worst nightmare does have a solution. As he himself said at the Exchange Summit event with Al Gore, the climate cannot be the agenda of a single ministry (our emphasis). The same applies to information integrity: it must underpin all actions, from those of COP envoys to government ministries, and be integral to all solutions.

Click here!

Case Study: Oil Drilling at the Mouth of the Amazon.

No Time for Nonsense.

Human beings lie. Is that news to anyone? I don’t think so. But when lies spread 70% faster than the truth, when they are boosted by algorithms, and when the measure of success is advertising, it’s a whole different ballgame. With this in mind, I invite you to delve into the issue dominating public debate in Brazil and causing the government to take flak from all sides: oil extraction in block FZA-M-59, located 175 km from Oiapoque in the state of Amapá in the Amazon River Basin.

Source: Arayara.

At the center of the debate is Petrobras, a mixed-capital company and a symbol of progress and sovereignty in the popular imagination (we’ll explain soon why this matters). Here’s a sponsored link from Petrobras that shows up at the top of Google’s first page. The problem? It’s hiding in plain sight, and we’re here to help you see more clearly.

Recently, after months of pressure, Petrobras received the green light to carry out the first impact test, the final stage of the environmental licensing process. Our friends at Arayara have a monitoring panel with maps, the names of companies involved, and the impacts, and our friends at Greenpeace launched an online petition to pressure the government to abandon the plan. As a result, the subject came back into the spotlight and began to dominate social media.

A qualitative study by Marina Kuzuyabu at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), which became her master’s thesis, analyzed all of Petrobras’ communications about oil exploration in block FZA-M-59 and identified the disinformation contained in these communications, following the definition of disinformation in the European Union’s Code of Practice on Disinformation:

“…verifiably false or misleading information which [...] is created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public”

Her findings reveal layers of climate disinformation across four categories, led by repeated slogans: “Extraction is…” necessary, safe, and full of opportunities. These clear, easy-to-grasp messages connect directly to both the national and local imagination. All the details are in Marina’s thesis, but she kindly shared with us the documents she obtained through Brazil’s Freedom of Information Law (Lei de Acesso à Informação, or LAI).

1) Socio-environmental impacts
According to the FGV study, company representatives informed local Indigenous leaders at a meeting on February 13, 2023, that Petrobras has never experienced an accident while drilling for oil offshore. But the data say otherwise: in 2022, there were nine reported oil spills (p. 3), and in 2023, there were seven (p. 126). At another meeting on November 8, 2022, they also said that emissions of environmentally harmful gases are limited to the short period of drilling activity. However, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) warns that the impacts may last "for more than 30 years" (item II-4).

2) Marine life in the block area
The company claimed that there was "no biological formation of interest." However, recent studies have identified living reef systems that would be directly affected in the case of spills.

3) Indigenous, quilombola, and traditional communities
According to the study, Petrobras claims to discuss everything in meetings with "broad participation of representative entities" (p. 82). However, the Federal Prosecutors’ Offices in Amapá and Pará, along with the Prosecutor General’s Office, had to intervene in order to try to guarantee this. They have not yet succeeded.

Marina spent two weeks in Amapá listening to communities affected by the project. She heard that local people, besides being excluded from the discussions, are also facing threats from politicians and local entities with vested interests in oil extraction. One of the anonymous reports stated:

“You’re labelled as being against the growth of the state, and against the population having access to a better quality of life. Because today, the discourse is that the project will save the state. That's the discourse. Everyone is saying that Oiapoque will be the main city in the state. Everyone’s speaking positively. So, I can see that this idea has entered people’s imagination.”

4) The confusion around “pollution scopes”
To calculate the emissions of any activity, including drilling wells and extracting oil, three categories, or “scopes,” are used:

• Scope 1: direct pollution from production;

• Scope 2: indirect pollution from the energy the company buys;

• Scope 3: indirect pollution from everything that happens before and after a company’s main activities. In the case of the oil and gas industry, most emissions fall into this category, and this is when fossil fuels are ultimately used.

When Petrobras wants to claim that its oil “has a lower carbon footprint than the global average,” it only mentions scopes 1 and 2.

But the company itself admits that more than 90% of its carbon footprint doesn’t come from its own operations (scopes 1 and 2), but from the use of its products by customers (scope 3).

It’s one of those stories that’s easy to miss, almost hidden in plain sight. See it now? Look closely… ;)

Here’s an exercise: after reading this list, let's go straight to the sixth letter from the COP President:

“Against a background in which climate urgency interacts with compounding geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges, the incoming Presidency hopes we remain guided from now to November by three interconnected priorities: (1) to reinforce multilateralism and the climate change regime under the UNFCCC, (2) to connect the climate regime to people’s real lives, and (3) to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement by stimulating action and structural adjustments across all institutions that can contribute to it.”

André Aranha Correa do Lago
COP30 President Designate

The emphasis is ours. Because climate disinformation is the biggest obstacle to any of the priorities identified by the president.

Subscribe now

Before the final notices, an important warning:
SUPPORT THE SCIENTISTS!

Timmons Roberts, a researcher from Brown University who honored us with his presence at our summit in Brasilia in March, is a regular reader and friend of Oii. He has become the target of accusations and legal threats for investigating opposition to offshore wind farms, particularly their connection to conservative networks (as reported by the New York Times and Bloomberg). We offer our full support to Tim and his team in this latest case of legal harassment against universities studying and helping us understand the impacts of misinformation.

Social Media Advertising Report Card: grade Z (zzzzZzzzzZzzzz…)
NetLAB developed the Advertising Transparency Index to rate the transparency of advertising on social media platforms. Spoiler alert: all the platforms do very little about this, and the sleeping giants of TikTok and X do even less.

Oil extraction does not bring...
...improvements in poverty, education, basic sanitation, employment, and health indices. It’s worth reading Rafael Oliveira's report from Agência Pública on one of the most repeated misconceptions in Brazil, especially for those in the Legal Amazon (hello, friends!). Oil extraction comes at a price.

Perplexed by the Paris Agreement?
It’s an inside joke for those who work in the climate field — because, let's face it, this is Brazil, and nothing is ever easy — and the updated guide has just been released by our friends at LACLIMA, experts in translating legalese, and the Climate Observatory.

P.S. For those who want to follow the monthly report, click here!

Accountability of big tech companies in Brazil: Although it's not climate-related, PL 2628 is a milestone because it's the first law passed in Congress to protect children on social media (Thais here!). As we've been saying for a long time, platforms are not neutral spaces and must be held accountable.

Information Integrity on Climate Change has been included in the action agenda for the first time in the history of COPs, and it has a day of its own! Save the date, and we'll see you there: November 12 and 13.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENSE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is credited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

Let me tell you a little lie: the environment is the enemy of progress.

Sounds harmless, right? But this is the mother (it’s always the mothers, right?!) of all climate disinformation in Brazil. And it paved the way to the approval of PL 2159/2021 — better known as the PL da Devastação (the ‘Devastation Bill’) — the biggest blow to environmental protection in 40 years.

In the dead of night, on July 17 (Forest Protection Day, ironically), 267 members of congress voted yes to the 'Devastation Bill' (General Environmental Licensing Law), 116 voted no, and 167 were absent — all with the help of the disinformation machine which works 24/7 against the environment.

In a Congress that stays silent in the face of the climate crisis, neutrality isn’t enough. We need changemakers. Skipping the vote is choosing silence. And silence, in moments like this, is complicity.

The ‘Devastation Bill’ in four tweets:

1. Trust-based licensing:
   simply swear that you are a good person and that you will not cause any negative impacts on an online form (yes, just like a Google form) and you will get your environmental licence. Renewals are automatic too.

2. No questions asked:
   13 agribusiness activities will now be exempt from licensing criteria in the name of “maintenance and improvements.” What counts as infrastructure improvements? Nobody knows…

3. Environmental free-for-all:
   states and cities now get to create their own exemption lists for handing out environmental licenses.

4. Deforestation credit given the green light:
   Banks that fund environmentally harmful businesses are now protected. This used to be illegal.

P.S. This bill removes assessments and oversight by environmental agencies.

P.P.S. There’s no transparency and no accountability… now what does this remind us of?

P.P.P.S. Flashback: isn’t this just like Brazil’s gold trade? Brazil is not for the faint of heart…

Oii!?
Since when does repeating a lie 1,383 times make it true?

“5,000 projects are on hold in Brazil because of environmental licensing” — this was the internet’s favorite pro-‘Devastation Bill’ narrative, with 1,383 mentions. In this version of the story, transparency, oversight, and accountability are seen as obstacles to progress.

You read that right: this lie is being used to push an agenda and protect a privileged few. That’s why Oii shines a light on the supply chain of lies, because we can't create solutions for what we can't see.

Oii, the Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate and Environment, a partner of the international coalition Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), is now publishing exclusive new data from CAAD’s research team.

Lawmakers cite the claim on social media that 5,000 projects are on hold due to environmental licensing. The problem? That number doesn't exist.

DATA SOURCE
CAAD Research Unit

TIMEFRAME
April to July 2025

SEARCH TERMS
Keywords related to the bill (e.g. “Devastation Bill,” “Environmental licensing,” “PL 2.159/2021,” and “PL2159”) combined with mentions of “5,000 projects” (such as “5 mil,” “5.000,” and “5.053” combined with “projects,” “developments,” or “works”)

TOOL
Brandwatch

PLATFORMS ANALYZED
Blogs, Facebook, Instagram, forums, YouTube, news sites, and X (formerly Twitter)

‘5,000 projects are on hold in Brazil due to issues with the current environmental licensing model? Senators Plínio Valério, Omar Aziz, Zequinha Marinho, and General Hamilton Mourão, along with other Brazilian politicians, have repeated this claim. The big issue: that information doesn’t exist anywhere. And who can we thank for uncovering this? Journalist Giovana Girardi from Agência Pública, who went after the truth of this story.

• The office of Senator Tereza Cristina — the bill’s rapporteur in the Senate and Brazil’s former Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply (2019–2022) — who cited the figure in a plenary session in support of the bill, said the information came from a presentation by the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (the ‘Frente Parlamentar Agropecuária’ or FPA).

• The FPA claimed they lost the link to the source, which supposedly came from the old Ministry of Infrastructure’s website (which has now been split into the Ministry of Ports and Airports and the Ministry of Transport);

• Both ministries said they found no trace of such data, but former staff suggested the numbers might have come from the Federal Court of Accounts (the ‘Tribunal de Contas da União’ or TCU);

• Not only did the TCU say that they had never produced this information, they also claimed that the reasons for the work stalling were not licensing issues, but rather (1) poor project planning, (2) lack of funding, and (3) mismanagement.

• By then, the information had already gone viral.

AS IT HAPPENS
The Digital News Report 2025 by the prestigious Reuters Institute provides insights that resonate with this newsletter.
1. People are getting more of their news from social media and platforms, and less from TV, print, radio, or news websites. We can already say that this is the new face of mainstream media.
2. Influencers and politicians are the biggest sources of mis- or disinformation.
3. Most people are still very concerned about mis- or disinformation.

The bill is now in the hands of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who can either sign it into law or veto it. If he vetoes it, Congress can override the decision and enforce the law anyway. The Supreme Court may also step in if the bill is seen as unconstitutional — and some experts say it is.

The #vetalula campaign has already gathered over half a million signatures.

Disinformation comes at a cost - literally!

We searched for ads about the “Devastation Bill” on Meta Ads. Unsurprisingly, we found plenty...

...repeating false claims — that the bill “modernizes” environmental licensing “without compromising biodiversity protections” (not true); that environmental licensing is holding back work on Highway BR-319 (already approved); that the current legislation treats rural producers as “criminals” (really?!); and of course, that it’s blocking the mysterious 5,000 projects (where?).

Click here

Top 5 Lies of the Month

At your request, we’re now sharing the month’s additional highlights from CAAD’s monitoring and surveys conducted by Oii's partners.

COP30 is ‘corrupt’
There’s a full-on effort to undermine the credibility of COP30. One claim, with no evidence, accuses the conference of corruption in cooperation agreements. We covered that in our first newsletter.

The father of deforestation
In the polarized Lula vs. Bolsonaro debate over environmental policy, deforestation data under the current administration is being used to illustrate the supposed hypocrisy of activists and environmentalists who have criticised Bolsonaro.

Support for oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River
Arguments in favor range from economic growth and local job creation to funding the energy transition.

Agro and the energy transition
In an attempt to reshape the narrative about agribusiness, the main driver of global warming in Brazil, references to the role of agriculture in the energy transition and carbon capture began to circulate. Is there a hint of greenwashing here? Absolutely.

DON’T MISS IT, São Paulo!

COP30: Why climate information integrity is now on the global agenda — for governments, institutions, and companies.
That’s the focus of our event at SPCW, São Paulo’s first-ever Climate Week. If you work in ESG, environment and climate, communications, journalism, research, or public policy — this one’s for you.
August 6 (Wednesday), 2–3 PM in Pinheiros. Free event — limited seats available. 👇

2 clicks subscribe

The cattle-burp lobby

Our journalist friend Maximiliano Manzoni uncovered how international agribusiness is working across Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to influence governments, put pressure on international negotiations, and even use public money to change how livestock’s climate impact is measured. Read more in Consenso (in English).

Extreme weather, extreme lies

Social media profits off conspiracy theories while hiding emergency alerts. From our friends at CCDH.

Abuse of environmental defenders

Lies and online attacks against environmental defenders are undermining the fight against the climate crisis. From our friends at Global Witness.

Collective action (our Mutirão in Brazil) against lies

Got a project that combats climate disinformation? Want to join a collective effort? The UN, UNESCO, and the Brazilian government are accepting applications until August 31.

Share Oii - Observatory for Information Integrity - Climate

CONTENT LICENCE
The content of this newsletter may be freely republished, in whole or in part, provided that the source is cited with the name of the publication. Reproduction may not be used for commercial purposes or to distort the original content.

In previous editions:

#1 The COP President’s worst nightmare is real
#2 “Shopee Indigenous Peoples” and climate disinformation

A lot of new people joined us over these past few months.
So glad to have you here with us!

We can’t design solutions for what we can’t see. That’s exactly how the climate disinformation machine works, a system I (Thais here!) have been calling the supply chain of climate lies. It’s a powerful, strategic, and highly profitable disinformation ecosystem targeting both the climate and people. The kicker? It doesn’t yet exist as a mapped, concrete system anywhere. But we’re working to change that.

Want to talk to us about it? Just send a quick "Hi" in the DMs!

According to the ILO, a production chain is "a set of interconnected activities that transform raw materials into final products or services—from extraction to distribution and consumption." Now imagine this logic applied to lies.

Climate disinformation has become a commodity, shaping global decisions, as we’ve already discussed here at the Climate & Environmental Information Integrity Observatory.

We urgently need to shine a collective light on this emerging market-system, where you and I are the end consumers, and start talking solutions. Information is a right.

So, who’s involved in this billion-dollar disinformation chain?

• Privately owned companies

• Digital channels that transport disinformation — platforms, apps

• Actors, channels, and messaging groups — politicians (and caucuses), religious leaders, influencers, businesspeople… yes, a full ecosystem

• Companies, groups, and movements with vested interests

• The media and advertising industry

The International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) has just released a review of 300 studies published between 2015 and 2025, confirming what we’ve long been saying here: “The findings show that powerful actors — including corporations, governments, and political parties — intentionally spread inaccurate or misleading narratives about climate change.”

Beyond the profits that fuel this ecosystem, there’s also a cross-sectoral impact of these lies on geopolitics, governments, public policy, science, journalism, the lives of individuals and organizations (many of whom are targeted and threatened), and on businesses.

You’re about to see a real case of a lie going viral online.
Stay with us, don’t lose the thread.

If we agree that disinformation impacts a country’s sovereignty, the global climate agenda (from urban planning to energy transition), and the rights of communities and individuals, then we urgently need to move toward a new kind of discussion:
shifting from individual accountability to systemic accountability.

We have a key moment on the agenda: Brazil, after launching a global initiative on climate information integrity at the G20 and last year’s COP, in partnership with UNESCO and the UN, now has the opportunity to lead a bold, global movement toward COP30.

During the Global Summit we hosted with partners in Brasília (Brazil) this March (pictured below), with over 150 participants, the Brazilian government officially committed to including climate information integrity in the COP agenda.

Photo: Alex Amaral / FALA – Impact Studio

This week, a major step was taken:
For the first time in history, climate information integrity has officially entered the COP Action Agenda.

📸 Photo: Isabela Castilho | COP30 Brazil

💡 CASE STUDY
There was a highway in the middle of it all - and the BBC.

The chart below shows March data from our monthly COP30 monitoring of Brazilian online spaces, conducted by FALA and CAAD's research unit using Brandwatch data. The spike in Brazil’s online traffic was caused by the sharing of a report from the UK’s BBC about a road being built in Pará, connecting the two largest cities in the state: the capital, Belém, and Ananindeua.

In total, we identified 20,000 mentions of COP30 alongside the terms “highway” or “road.”

The “Avenida Liberdade” cuts through a conservation unit. The BBC’s headline is damning: “Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit.”

Let’s be clear: the problem isn’t exactly the BBC (in fact, we have readers from there…Hi BBC folks, hope you’re doing well!), the issue lies in the cunning, sneaky supply chain of lies. The press is always a primary target of disinformers, and using facts to deceive is a technique straight out of their playbook (we’ll explain more below).

“Here in Brazil, you haven’t heard a thing,” said a YouTuber in a conspiratorial tone in one of the most-watched videos about the BBC report. “But abroad, everyone is talking about this outrage!”

WHO - ANCAPSU, a channel by Ricardo Albuquerque Pinto, a profile mentioned several times by UFRJ’s NetLab in the report “How YouTube Funds Climate Denial, Conspiracism, and Disinformation About Rio Grande do Sul.”

FOLLOWERS
YouTube: 708K
X/Twitter (150 mil)

PUBLICATION DATE
March 13, 2025

VIEWS
98K

Shall we take a closer look at what actually happened?
First of all, the focus is on a 13 km (8 miles) stretch of road that has been in planning stages since 2012 (as the BBC itself reports). Just for comparison, the Rio-Niterói bridge in Rio de Janeiro is longer than that.

It’s not an insignificant amount of deforestation, but it’s tiny compared to another piece of information that wasn’t mentioned and didn’t even register a blip on the chart at the top of this newsletter. According to Imazon, the state of Pará has held the national deforestation record every year since 2016. In 2024 alone, (brace yourself) 1,260 km² (486.5 square miles) of Amazon rainforest was destroyed there. Remember our comparison with the Rio-Niterói bridge? Well, this area is the equivalent of… the entire city of Rio de Janeiro. Yes, seriously.

You’re getting the picture, right?

Those who oppose the UN Climate Conference are never going to mention the 486.5 square miles, because this deforestation has mostly been driven by agribusiness (over 90%, according to MapBiomas), to clear land for pasture. Some sectors of agribusiness actively fund the climate disinformation machine (according to Agência Pública), and that’s no coincidence: the SEEG (Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimating System) reports that agribusiness is “responsible for 74% of all Brazilian climate pollution.”

Turning the BBC report into a weapon against COP30 is a textbook disinformation tactic, and it’s got two hideous names, both of which are in the Climate Disinformation Reference Guide, produced by CAAD.

• Cherry picking
  Also known as “selective bias,” this tactic involves “carefully selecting only the data that supports a position, while ignoring evidence that contradicts it.”

• Paltering
  According to a definition from Harvard that we cited in the guide (fancy, right?), this is “the active use of truthful statements to influence a target’s beliefs by giving a false or distorted impression.”

“Let’s focus on the 8-mile road, and just quietly forget about the area the size of Rio de Janeiro that’s been deforested. No one will even notice, right?”

🫢 Oii!? (What, in English)

Lawmakers are using public funds to sponsor pro-mining ads on social media, some showing clear signs of greenwashing. Reported by Erika Zordan for InfoAmazonia.

The so-called “Agro COP” was canceled, as reported by Fábio Zanini in Folha de S.Paulo. But what kind of agribusiness does this agro represent?

🤩 That friendly Oii (or Hello, in English)

GRANT
For those looking to join forces for climate information integrity: UNESCO has just launched a new call for project proposals. Applications are open until July 6, 2025.

Oii shines a light on the suply chain of lies because we can’t create solutions for what we can’t see.

In previous editions…
The COP president’s worst nightmare has come true

In April, agribusiness and far-right groups intensified their attacks on Indigenous issues, trying to discredit the movement by tying it to the “leftist” agenda and conspiracy theories like “globalism.” This was revealed by our monitoring, carried out with the research unit of Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD).

Subscribe now!

These attacks were triggered by the Acampamento Terra Livre (“Free Land Camp”), Brazil’s largest annual Indigenous gathering, which brought together over 6,000 Indigenous people from 150 ethnic groups across the country to Brasília.

As usual, part of the disinformation strategy involved denying the very existence of Indigenous peoples, using racist slurs like “fake Indian,” “city Indian,” and “Shopee Indigenous”. The last of these uses the name of a Chinese e-commerce platform well-known in Brazil to imply that Indigenous people’s identities are somehow counterfeit, like cheap copies of real products. “Communist China” and everything it produces are also frequent targets.

WHO
Carla Zambelli, federal congresswoman for PL-SP (Liberal Party, São Paulo), recently removed from office for publishing electoral disinformation on her social media (G1).

FOLLOWERS
X/Twitter: 2.6M
YouTube: 3.7M

PUBLICATION DATE
April 10, 2025

VIEWS
1.1M

The posts of federal congresswoman Carla Zambelli, recently removed from office for spreading election disinformation and sentenced to 10 years in prison for ideological falsehood, reached more users than any other content on the topic in Brazil — the second deadliest country in the world for those who defend life and the forest. Her attacks have gained significant traction.

At the request of Oii, researchers from FGV’s School of Communication, Media and Information analyzed Brazilian legislators' social media posts about the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL). They identified 83 politicians who posted about the event, with a total of 450,000 interactions on the posts. However, nearly all the engagement centered on just two accounts: indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá (PSOL), who helped promote the ATL, and Carla Zambelli, the top performer in reach and interactions among critics of Indigenous groups and the event.

In a single Instagram video featuring the term ‘Shopee Indigenous’ in both the images and the caption, Zambelli achieved 1.1 million views, 68,000 likes, and almost 10,000 comments.

Share Oii!

Oii attended the ATL to shed light on the hidden impacts of lies and disinformation, such as the harm done to:

• Public policies and rights guaranteed by international protocols, like land demarcation;

• Leaders, their families and communities, who become targets in an unequal power struggle;

• And, crucially, how we all perceive and understand the Indigenous movement, eroding public support and potential alliances;

See for yourself:

How to Expose the Lies
Thais here! ;)

I'm writing this message to you directly from my Eisenhower Fellowship journey. Over the past two months, I've met with over a hundred people to brainstorm solutions for the supply chain of climate lies — a topic we've been addressing for years through our Mentira Tem Preço (“Lies Have a Price”) program. Have you heard of it?

The latest research on combating disinformation and hate speech hasn’t been very successful because a key factor has been overlooked. Since the early days of this field in the 1940s, human emotion and social science have been excluded from the conversation, along with real-world factors, such as how social dynamics and inequality fuel violent responses.

Now we must have the courage to invent something new.

That's why people are once again at the centre of our next project, a HUB for climate and disinformation conversations, both online and offline, across Brazil and beyond.

Let me share some key insights:

• It is impossible to solve what we cannot see. How can we shine an even brighter light on this issue?

• How can we disseminate truth when many perceive it as falsehood?

• Words are taking on new meanings. For some, “disinformation” means “censorship”. This is cultural transformation. What else are we waiting for?

We must dare to imagine a new future. Starting now.

FPA: False Posts Abound (not really)

Did you catch this? The Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA) paid to boost ads that downplayed the environmental impact of agribusiness and spread climate disinformation, according to NetLab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Researchers analysed 157 Facebook and Instagram ads from the FPA in 2023 — and found that nearly half of them contained false or misleading information.

It’s not just the internet spreading lies

Our friends at QuotaClimat found that TV and radio in France broadcast an average of 10 climate-related lies every week, mostly targeting renewable energy and electric vehicles. The good news? QuotaClimat are on our side — and they’ve already started digging into the same issues here in Brazil. More info coming soon. :)

Click here!

(“Oii!” is also Brazil’s way of saying “heyy!”. You might notice some wordplay throughout this newsletter…)

After five years of tracking a supply chain of lies worth US$78 billion* with our Mentira Tem Preço (Lies Have a Price), the time has come to share the truth about climate lies and disinformation in Brazil that few know and many want to hide. Here we go...

The COP president's
worst nightmare has come true

If the corridors of Baku at COP29 were buzzing with talk of the next COP in Brazil, as if it were the next World Cup, the feeling on digital platforms and messaging apps is very different. Instead of the 'super positive' COP for Brazil that the president of COP30, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, has been dreaming of, it’s his 'worst nightmare', as he put it in a recent interview with Roda Viva. Why? LIES.

The COP of disinformation is real, and the strategy is to weaken the UN conference that has been trying for so long to resolve one of our biggest crises, the climate crisis, and to cast doubt on Brazil's role as host.

The climate conference in Belém will be competing with at least two events designed to undermine its impact: the first is CPAC, in Manaus, Amazonas - a conservative conference organised in Brazil by Eduardo Bolsonaro (who may have to attend from afar, as he has gone to the US with no planned return date). The second event is the so-called ‘Agro COP’, in Marabá, Pará, organised by the Association of Independent Rural Producers of the Amazon.

These two events, which will take place in close proximity to the Belém COP in terms of both geography and timing, were created to stir things up on social media against the climate conference.

(Let's face it, the statements about drilling for oil at the mouth of the Amazon river haven’t helped either).

* Link to the study

So, how does this whole supply chain of lies work?

To get things moving, we need algorithms that work 24/7 without any transparency; lies that compete in the race without taking doping tests — an MIT study showed that lies spread 70 per cent faster than truthful information; companies that profit from all this; and clicks and views — yes, ours, from the very people being harmed —that reward the system with power, influence and lots of money.

In many channels and posts, do Lago, the president of the COP, is portrayed as the Brazilian 'deep state', working at the service of the 'globalists' and committed to the 'green agenda' against national sovereignty. Let’s take a moment to translate this conspiracy jargon:

• Deep state is the new buzzword on the block, and even the rich and famous are talking about it. It supposedly refers to a hidden group secretly running the government. (in which case, they must be experts at playing hide-and-seek…)

• Globalist is an older term, but it hasn’t gone out of fashion. It’s used to label anything that is anti-patriotic, implying a glorious struggle of the homeland and its traditions against the rest of the world - a very effective tool of the populist right.

• The Green Agenda is actually a real thing; it's a nickname for the 2030 Agenda, a global action plan with 17 sustainable development goals. For some, however, it's basically a dirty word, which points to a supposed plot to push “woke capitalism” and take away individual freedoms and stand in the way of progress.

And no, I’m not going to explain “woke capitalism” right now. We’d be here all day…

The uproar about Ambassador Corrêa do Lago becoming COP30 president prompted a wave of YouTube posts. From there, the lies spread through other platforms — a classic strategy, as noted in 2022 by Leonardo Nascimento, a researcher on disinformation networks and professor at the Federal University of Bahia. “YouTube is undoubtedly the great protagonist of disinformation and is at the centre of production… it’s as if the apps are the street dealers and YouTube is the crack house.”

WHO
Kim Paim, digital influencer - cited in the Federal Police investigation into the Abin Paralela case as a ‘propagation vector’ of disinformation.

FOLLOWERS
Youtube (824,000) and X/Twitter (1.6 million)

PUBLICATION
21 January 2025, on X

VIEWS
57 thousand

There’s nothing new here - just the same old lies popping up again like an ex you keep going back to.

“We learnt in biology and chemistry that everything contains carbon. Carbon is a sign of life. So I don't understand...'. Hm, neither do we. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is public enemy number one among the greenhouse gases.

WHO
Revista Oeste, which has already been demonetised for ‘harmful content’ and had several posts flagged as disinformation. The excerpt is by commentator Alexandre Garcia, the same journalist who spread lies about the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul and the Yanomami crisis.

FOLLOWERS
2.8 million on Youtube and 1.6 million on Twitter

PUBLICATION
14 February, on the programme “Oeste Sem Filtro” (“Oeste Unfiltered”)

VIEWS
525 thousand

💡 There was a global summit in Brazil

Last March, we hosted the Climate Information Integrity Summit, a global event organized by FALA, Climate Action Against Disinformation, and Conscious Advertising Network that brought together governments, embassies, civil society, businesses, the UN, UNESCO, communicators, leaders, and scientists in Brazil — and there was this beautiful launch video. More than 120 people joined in person, with several dozen more attending virtually. Four important outcomes emerged from the event:

• Climate information integrity will be a priority at COP30

• The European Union announced that it is advancing procedures to formalise its commitment to the Global Initiative and to contribute financially

• A global community came together, ready to seek solutions

• The pre-launch of Oii

Lies turn people, movements, public policies, organisations, and even governments into targets. That’s why Oii will also serve as a bridge to the stories you need to hear — like that of Cristiana Losekann, a scientist in Brazil who has been threatened and harassed for doing her work.

I'm Still Here*

‘Climate denial in Brazil is pushed most explicitly by far-right figures, a small group of anti-environmentalist activists and ultra-conservative leaders (such as Ricardo Felício, Evaristo Miranda, Bertrand de Orleans e Bragança, Alain Santos, among others)...’

These are the words of Carlos Milani, Full Professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ). He and his colleagues are completing a study about it — once it’s ready, you’ll see it here.

*Yes, like the Brazilian film that just won the country’s first Oscar — thanks for reading all the way through.

Want to be part of future editions? Got something interesting to share?

Click here!

Subscribe now