Challenges and Solutions to Prevent Disinformation in Environmental Policy Making

About this Event

The UN General Assembly expressed in 2021 concern about the proliferation of disinformation. In response, the United Nations is promoting international cooperation to counter this threat. In response, the UN Secretary-General has issued the report Countering disinformation for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which draws on contributions from Member States, UN entities and other stakeholders. The report outlines the relevant international legal framework and reviews measures taken by States and technology companies to address disinformation. In its resolution 55/10, the Human Rights Council requested its Advisory Committee to conduct a study and to prepare a report on the impact of disinformation on the enjoyment and realization of human rights, and to present it to the Human Rights Council at its sixty-first session (HRC61). The report aims to identify, among others, how human rights are impacted the most by disinformation, including on matters on the environment and climate, how forms of disinformation are considered particularly problematic for human rights, and how some measures to counter disinformation negatively impact human rights’ enjoyment.

Misinformation and disinformation continue to rank among the world’s most severe global risks. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026, identifies misinformation and disinformation as one of the five most significant global risks for the year. It ranks this threat second in the two-year outlook and 4th on a 10-year horizon.

Disinformation is also increasingly shaping public debates and influencing environmental policy decisions, often undermining efforts to address urgent global challenges driven by the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution. This event will explore the critical issue of disinformation in environmental policy-making and its far-reaching consequences.

Participants will gain insights into how false or misleading narratives affect public understanding and policy-making on key environmental topics. Through concrete examples, the discussion will highlight common tactics used to spread disinformation and distort scientific evidence.

The event also explored practical solutions. Experts shared strategies to counter disinformation, underscoring the importance of policies that promote transparency, address conflicts of interest, and support evidence-based decision-making. By fostering dialogue among stakeholders, the event aims to strengthen collective action against disinformation and safeguard informed environmental governance.

A light lunch was provided.

Speakers

By order of intervention.

Patrycja SASNAL

Senior Professorial Fellow, European Neighbourhood Chair, College of Europe | Member of the United Nations Human Rights Advisory Committee on Disinformation

Andrea ZBINDEN

Senior Policy Advisor, Focal Point for UNEP and INC Plastic Pollution, Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland

Miriam G. MEDEL GARCIA

Head, Environment Team, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

Tobia SPAMPATTI

Researcher, Max Planck Institute

Patricia VILLARRUBIA-GÓMEZ

Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Umeå

Gabriel SIGMUND

Member of the Board, International Panel on Chemical Pollution | Assistant Professor, Wageningen University

Rachel RADVANY

Environmental Health Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law

Sébastien DUYCK

Senior Attorney, Climate & Energy Program, Center for International Environmental Law | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live from the International Environment House.

Summary

Introduction and Framing of Objectives

Sébastian DUYCK | Senior Attorney, Climate & Energy Program, Center for International Environmental Law | Moderator

• Geneva has been playing a role in clarifying some of the legal obligations that states have to combat disinformation in the context of environmental governance.
• We look forward to hearing about some of the word that has already taken place and more importantly, what remains to be done, and the perspectives of different actors crucial to environmental governance in the context of the risks brough forth by disinformation.
• Disinformation has been something that has gained increasing recognition as a threat, not just from the global community but also for instance at the COP30.
• COP30 was the first time climate disinformation was on the agenda of some Presidency organized event and there was the launch of an intergovernmental Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate.
• We are often discussing negative developments of the past few months, so I wanted to start with a positive update. We really welcome the fact that the European Union has joined this COP 30 declaration on information integrity on climate change just three days ago. It highlights that things can happen in a positive direction, and states can roll up their sleeves to rally with other allies to try to combat the threat of disinformation and its consequences for international environmental governance.
• Today’s discussion brings together representatives from governments, scientific experts, NGOs, and human rights experts.

Disinformation from the Viewpoint of Human Rights Obligation, and the Work of the Advisory Committee on Disinformation

Patrycja SASNAL | Senior Professorial Fellow, European Neighbourhood Chair, College of Europe | Member of the United Nations Human Rights Advisory Committee on Disinformation

I am a member of the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council. The committee is supposed to be the “thinktank” of the HRC. The advisory committee is made up of18 experts who serve the council with expertise. In 2024, the HRC asked the Advisory Committee in resolution 55/10 to prepare a report about the impact of disinformation on the enjoyment of human rights, and I am one of the co-authors of the report. The report will be made public next month.

Why disinformation is of particular interest from the point of view of human rights

Freedom of expression and information are paramount bases for our analysis. They are paramount for a healthy democracy and for the full enjoyment of human rights. The deliberate spread of false information can manipulate public discourse, silence dissenting voices, and hinder the free flow of ideas, including access to scientific evidence and evidence-based information and diverse sources. This impacts the possibility of informed decision making, policy, human agency, and the exercise of other rights such as the right to health or the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

• States have a responsibility to ensure an enabling space for the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. Any measure by the state to tackle disinformation must refrain from actions that could lead to arbitrary censorship, restrictions of expression protected under the right to freedom of expression, or the suppression of dissenting views under the guise of combating disinformation. Unfortunately, this has happened often.
• In the report, we talk about other rights too. Although freedom of expression and freedom of information are the basis of all the considerations, disinformation also violates the right to privacy and protection of one’s reputation. It violates non-discrimination and equality and impacts participation in public affairs. It can also violate the right to benefit from scientific progress and the right to health, and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
• The report talks about groups particularly impacted by this information, such as women, minorities, migrants, journalists, human rights defenders, including environmental human rights defenders, children and older persons. The report analyzes certain contexts in which disinformation flourishes, such as disinformation about human rights, multilateral cooperation, multiculturalism, and disinformation in armed conflict, vis-a-vis democracy, social cohesion, and elections. It will also look at science, environmental disinformation, health, and systemic forms of disinformation such as racism.

In its conclusion, the report states that disinformation is the vehicle of an epistemological crisis unfolding globally. Human rights and collective goals in the name of public interest such as democracy, environmental protection, and socioeconomic equity are threatened by weak human rights-based governance in general, such as weak protection of the rights to freedom of expression, equality and non-discrimination, privacy, and rule of law institutions and independent media.

Human rights and public interest goals are also threatened by the concentration of ownership and corporate control of communications and digital technologies. This power asymmetry is strengthened by co-optation of other actors, notably public leaders who, for influence or financial gain, engage in disinformation.

• States use disinformation as a tool of international conflict and hybrid warfare. Individual media personalities make it their business model. People at the bottom of the power pyramid find themselves manipulated, unable to make informed judgements about their own and their family’s health and well-being or meaningfully participate in public life.
• States find it increasingly difficult to devise and implement human rights compliant policies and address humanitarian and environmental crises with due urgency, while trust in media, public institutions, and international law is declining.

To positively address this epistemological crisis, our committee extracts three common principles for the integrity of the information system as we call it. We extract them from UN documents, and we place emphasis on: public empowerment and media and information literacy, bolstering a free and independent and pluralistic media, and the accountability of business.

• We take particular interest in the need to protect the victims of disinformation and in elaborating on the concept of environmental disinformation which has not been sufficiently addressed in UN documents on disinformation. The report also has the component of recommendations including to States and including on environmental disinformation, which we encourage all to consult.

Government Perspectives

Andrea ZBINDEN | Senior Policy Advisor, Focal Point for UNEP and INC Plastic Pollution, Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland

• Information and disinformation spread faster than ever and in the context of complex and politically significant negotiations, misleading information can easily gain traction. This has consequences for multilateral processes, including delays in decision-making and weaker outcomes and poses challenges for multilateral environmental governance.
• With upcoming meetings of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, this dialogue is particularly timely.
• From a governmental perspective, science-policy interfaces matter because policymakers and negotiators rely on independent scientific input. These interfaces help make better use of existing knowledge by transforming complex research into comprehensive, reliable, independent, and policy-relevant assessments that decision makers can trust and act upon. They ensure that evidence feeds into decision-making processes without being prescriptive, responding to policy questions while leaving it to decision makers to determine how scientific input is taken into account.
• Across areas such as climate, biodiversity, chemicals and pollution, science-policy interfaces ensure that negotiations focus on how to respond to scientific findings rather than renegotiating them.
  • In the context of the global plastics treaty, they can clarify the state of knowledge on plastic pollution and its impacts on human health and the environment and indicate possible courses of action. Bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change translate complex research into assessments that are policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.
• The newly established Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution was highlighted as having a crucial role to play by providing independent, evidence-based and policy-relevant scientific information to support informed governmental decision-making. Switzerland’s role in the establishment of the panel was noted, as well as its hosting of the first plenary session in Geneva.
• By providing credible, transparent and policy-relevant assessments, science-policy interfaces strengthen the foundations of multilateral cooperation, provide a shared evidence base for negotiators, help identify and correct misleading claims, and support the design of effective solutions, enabling scientific findings to be translated into better decisions for people and the environment.
• The credibility of science-policy interfaces was linked to their legitimacy, which stems from broad participation, rigorous processes, peer review, and transparency aimed at building scientific consensus on policy questions.
• Effective interfaces rely on diverse expertise across natural and social sciences, economics, health, technology, and Indigenous and local knowledge. They operate as living ecosystems rather than static reports, functioning through networks of experts, capacity-building activities, and ongoing policy dialogues. Through this approach, they offer governments a common factual baseline that helps avoid misinformation, fragmentation, and politicization of technical issues.
• Promoting science-based decision-making in multilateral environmental processes requires science-policy interfaces capable of delivering high-quality assessments, engaging diverse experts, and strengthening capacity across regions. It also requires better coordination among the growing number of science-policy mechanisms across the United Nations system, improved access for negotiators to scientific expertise, enhanced capacity to interpret complex data, and communication tools that make science more accessible without compromising credibility.
• The promotion of science in multilateral processes was illustrated by a joint statement delivered by Switzerland on behalf of 60 countries at the United Nations Environment Assembly to launch a Group of Friends on Science, with the aim of ensuring that future environmental negotiations are informed by reliable evidence and scientific integrity.
• Let us remember that trust in science is trust in our collective ability to understand problems and find solutions together. Thus, science is our strongest ally in addressing the triple planetary crisis, and we must protect it, resource it and use it.

Miriam G. Medel GARCIA | Head, Environment Team, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

• Mexico has a very strong stance on science, with science at the core of all environmental action. Addressing disinformation in environmental policymaking requires looking beyond communication tools, which are important, and focusing on making science accessible to politicians and decision makers.
• Policymakers are extremely busy, face many competing challenges, and benefit when complex science is translated into language that is accessible for policy.
• Environmental issues are highly complex and socially consequential. This makes it especially important to foster strong, transparent, and inclusive institutional frameworks. The governance dimension of the science-policy interface is critical, as having reliable information depends on how scientific knowledge is generated, assessed, and integrated into decision-making. Strengthening these processes helps reduce misinterpretation, selective use of evidence, and confusion between technical analysis and value-based judgments and contributes to higher levels of trust in institutions.
• We approach the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution and the plastics treaty process with the conviction that global assessments are needed on the issues at hand. This includes identifying knowledge gaps, communicating complex science in accessible formats, and supporting countries in translating evidence into decision-making.
• We draw on long-standing experience with the IPBES and the IPCC, which serve as models and are now complemented by the ISP.
• Recent developments in Mexico are encouraging, including leadership with experience as an IPCC scientist and the creation of a Ministry of Science for the first time in the country’s history. These steps reflect efforts to better integrate science into government action, including at the highest political level.
• The processes of the IPBES, IPCC, and ISP-CWP are complex and involve debate, which must be acknowledged. At the same time, they have shown that structured, transparent and intergovernmental scientific assessments can meaningfully inform global agendas, support national policymaking, and improve the quality of international negotiations. We have engaged actively in these platforms and intend to continue doing so, including within the ISP.
• We want to promote transparent processes and robust management of conflicts of interest, ensuring that scientific input remains independent, credible, and policy relevant. This is particularly important given the types of issues on which the ISP will advise governments.
• Plastic pollution is an environmental issue, but also a health issue, a social issue, and an economy-wide issue. Science-based decision-making in this context requires taking the full life cycle of plastics seriously, including when evidence points to the need for preventive and upstream measures and when difficult decisions must be made.
• Three elements are particularly important:
  • Inclusivity requires scientific processes to integrate diverse disciplines and forms of knowledge, including Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and traditional knowledge, which often provide early warnings of environmental and health impacts that later become visible in formal research.
  • Accessibility requires scientific outputs to be usable for policymakers with limited time and competing priorities.
  • Institutional connectivity requires panels, treaty bodies, UN agencies and national institutions to avoid operating in silos, with stronger links among the ISP, WHO, UNEP, and other processes, particularly in the context of ongoing UN reform.
• Countering disinformation is not about restricting debate or forcing alignment around a single position. It is about protecting the conditions for meaningful debate, where disagreements are transparent, evidence is weighed more effectively, and uncertainty is handled more responsibly.
• We are committed to multilateralism grounded in knowledge, inclusion and transparency, and see the ISP as a key platform to strengthen trust between science and policy and to contribute constructively to upcoming plenaries, negotiations and environmental processes.

Scientific Foundations of Disinformation

Tobia SPAMPATTI | Researcher, Max Planck Institute 

• I’m here to represent an academic perspective on disinformation and environmental policymaking.
• From an academic standpoint, it is useful to begin with definitions, as disinformation has been discussed extensively without always clarifying what is meant in scientific literature.
  • Two consensus definitions, from the American Psychological Association and from the United States National Academies of Sciences, distinguish between misinformation and disinformation:
    • Misinformation is any information that is false or otherwise misleading. This includes not only fabricated information, but also true information that is used in a way that misleads people toward conclusions that are not supported by the data.
    • Misinformation about science is a subcategory in which information is spread that questions the scientific consensus at a given moment.
    • Disinformation is a further subcategory of misinformation in which there is identifiable intent to mislead the public or an audience toward a specific conclusion.
• There is a large amount of disinformation circulating, particularly in the climate space, which provides illustrative examples. Scientific research has sought to develop taxonomies of the strategies used to convince the public.
• Drawing on climate disinformation, which can be applied to other topics, five broad strategies are commonly identified:
  • The first is denying that a problem exists, such as denying climate change or global warming.
  • The second is denying human causality, for example rejecting the role of human greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The third is accepting existence and causality but denying the impacts of a planetary crisis.
  • The fourth, particularly relevant in policy contexts, is denying the effectiveness of solutions.
  • The fifth strategy, when others fail, is questioning the reliability of science altogether.
• Strategies that target solutions or policymaking often claim that policies are harmful, ineffective, too difficult, or unworkable. Examples include the circulation of a widely shared image of a frozen wind turbine during the Texas winter storm, used to suggest that reliance on renewable energy caused energy blackouts and loss of life, even though the image was taken out of context and originated in Sweden years earlier.
• Other examples include arguments presented in policy negotiations suggesting that regulating certain industrial products harms vulnerable populations, such as children.
• Empirical research has examined the impacts of such information. Experimental studies, including research conducted across 12 countries with approximately 8,000 participants, compared individuals exposed to disinformation with those who were not.
  • Exposure to disinformation led participants to believe less in anthropogenic climate change, perceive its consequences as less severe, become less able to distinguish true from false information in the future, and hold less positive attitudes toward climate mitigation actions.
  • Behavioral effects were also observed, with reduced pro-environmental behavior. Experimental psychological studies therefore show that disinformation affects multiple psychological processes and behavior.
• Research also examines how disinformation works. A commonly used model illustrates pathways through which climate disinformation and disinformation more broadly operate.
  • Exposure is a prerequisite for belief and sharing, as people are not born believing conspiracy theories but come to believe them through exposure. Exposure increases the likelihood of both belief and sharing, which are distinct processes, as information can be shared even without being believed.
  • These pathways are influenced by risk factors that increase susceptibility, including cues embedded in the information or in its communication.
• Susceptibility can be analyzed by considering the source of information, the content itself, and the recipient. At a psychological level, information may operate through reasoning-based or cognitive pathways, or through pathways linked to social influence and emotion.
• Disinformation is more likely to be believed when it cues emotional states, aligns with shared political identity or ideology, or matches prior beliefs and moral convictions. Multiple risk factors can accumulate, increasing the likelihood of belief and sharing. These same psychological factors, however, can also be leveraged to support the spread and acceptance of accurate information.
• Now to conclude with evidence on how to address misinformation. Syntheses of the literature, including quantitative meta-analyses, show that correcting misinformation works on average and reduces belief in previously encountered disinformation. Three elements are particularly important:
  • Speed matters, as faster correction reduces continued belief. Detail matters, as more detailed corrections are more effective.
  • Scale matters, as exposure plays a central role in belief formation,
  • and giving platforms to corrections increases the likelihood that accurate information will be believed.
• Multiple approaches to countering disinformation exist, and further discussion of these approaches can take place in moderated exchanges.

Experience from the Plastics Treaty Negotiations (INC)

Patricia VILLARBUBIA-GÓMEZ | Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Umeå

• Today, I will draw on the experiences from members of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty that we have gathered across several sessions of the international Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, as well as during related events.
• The Scientists’ Coalition is a group of nearly 500 independent scientists from more than 70 countries, researching plastics across a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. We strive to transparently communicate the best available peer-reviewed science to negotiators and delegates in order to support evidence-based decision-making. Internally, we have a robust conflict-of-interest policy and processes to ensure our independence.
• One of our recurring tasks during the INC process has been to identify and address misunderstandings and misinterpretations of scientific evidence in order to enable an informed negotiation process, as previous speakers have highlighted. At the core of this discussion is the role of robust scientific evidence.
• Decades of independent research, together with knowledge from affected communities and rights holders, clearly demonstrate the scale and severity of plastic pollution, its impacts on ecosystems and human health, and its role within the triple planetary crisis. Ensuring INC members have access to the best available knowledge is therefore fundamental for evidence-based, effective policymaking and for the protection of people and the planet.
• At the same time, it is very important to remain aware of conflicts of interest and of actors whose incentives prioritize profit over the protection of public or environmental health.
  • Conflicts of interest include past or present employment by, or consulting for, the chemical and plastics industry and related organizations. Experts with such conflicts of interest should not participate in the core work of working groups or the science-policy interface, where misinformation becomes particularly harmful.
• Well-documented strategies for manufacturing doubt on science have been actively deployed by Big Oil lobbyists in climate negotiations, by the tobacco industry regarding health, and now by lobbyists in the plastics policy arena. These tactics include manufacturing uncertainty around existing evidence, continuously raising evidentiary thresholds, discrediting scientists, and reframing well-established harms as unproven, premature, or fear-mongering.
• These strategies operate through several mechanisms. First, research that challenges dominant industry narratives is increasingly underfunded or sidelined, while industry-aligned research is amplified. Second, non-peer-reviewed reports are produced by actors with vested interests, including corporate actors. Despite clear biases, conflicts of interest, and reliance on cherry-picked data, these reports are frequently introduced into policy discussions and echoed in policy proposals and public messaging, often with little scrutiny.
• We have observed that well-established scientific consensus is being questioned or dismissed, particularly on chemical toxicity and human health impacts. For example, some actors falsely claim that plastics are inert, that they do not interact with human health or ecosystems, or that so-called biodegradable plastics are inherently safer and more sustainable alternatives.
• Other narratives equate plastic pollution with plastic waste, even referring to the process itself as a “plastic waste treaty.” This framing is scientifically inaccurate, yet it has been amplified. It promotes end-of-life measures such as mechanical and chemical recycling, while downplaying or actively obstructing discussions on critical upstream measures. In particular, this framing diverts attention away from uncontrolled plastic production, regardless of feedstock, and from the widespread use of hazardous plastic chemicals.
• Several members of the Scientists’ Coalition have experienced harassment, intimidation, or threats both inside and outside negotiation venues.
  • These actions were not aimed at improving transparency, but rather at intimidating, burdening, and silencing researchers. In some cases, they escalated into direct attacks on scientists’ credibility and reputation. Such practices undermine not only individual scientists, but the collective right to science.
• The UN Human Rights Council High Commissioner has emphasized the right to science, which includes participation, access to the benefits of scientific progress, and protection for those producing knowledge.
• When scientists, observers, and rights holders are marginalized, restricted, or intimidated, the integrity of policymaking itself is compromised.
• While some delegations are well supported by scientific expertise across the full life cycle of plastics, many others lack the financial capacity to do so, creating structural inequities between member states.
• Ensuring negotiators have access to objective and transparent scientific evidence, and to scientists who are free of conflicts of interest, will assist them as they navigate these complex and sometimes polarized debates.
• Objective science will inevitably assist in aligning views and advancing negotiations, but this is only possible if negotiators have access to credible, legitimate information and to science itself.

Experience from the Science-Policy Panel Process

Gabriel SIGMUND | Member of the Board, International Panel on Chemical Pollution | Assistant Professor, Wageningen University

• I am a member of the International Panel on Chemical Pollution (IPCP) and this group of independent academics has been at the forefront of pushing for a panel to complement the climate change and biodiversity panels, for the third of the triple planetary crisis, which is a chemicals, pollution and waste crisis.
• During the negotiations for the establishment of the panel, which was established last year, the IPCP wrote a piece on Conflict of Interest in the Assessment of Chemicals, Waste, and Pollution.
• This piece laid out how conflict of interest in the past have jeopardized, hindered, harmed, and delayed action in various spaces surrounding chemical pollution. We experience a not too surprising but intense pushback from a number of actors.
• One of the most common arguments there was that everybody has interests and while everybody might have biases and interests, not everybody has conflicts of interest.
• Everybody has a personal material gain to be sought in these negotiations but its very important to differentiate conflicts of interest from interests.
• This paper discussed a number of very popular widely used methods or approaches that actors with vested interests frequently use to advance their interests.
• Some of the most important ones are criticizing study designs or overemphasizing the shortcomings of scientific studies. They might find one small issues and thereby try to discredit the whole study.
• Discrediting and intimidating scientists, publishing misinformation, more often than not by scientists that they directly or indirectly employ consultants hiding or obscuring the sources of funding for research, or cherry-picking data and being selective in what is considered good data and what isn’t.
• As the panel is still being established, we will hear negotiations in the coming week on how the panel will actually be operationalized, what types of conflict of interest policies may or may not be implemented. On the content level, we cannot say that there is not enough experience on the scientific content level.
• Based on previous experience, if we look at pesticides, there are some nations such as Brazil where the pesticide producers are the only ones providing evidence for the registration of their pesticide.
  • There is well documented evidence that pesticide producing companies submitted completely different reports or registration of their pesticides in Europe.
  • At the same time, they did so in Brazil with the Brazilian submission which left out some key points of evidence that could have harmed them.
  • There is a report that looks into this issue in more detail and out of 247 pesticides formulations that were registered, none of the submitted documents found any evidence for toxic effects. When they looked into the scientific literature, however, more than 80% of those active ingredients actually had some toxic effect related to them.
• There was also a important study on roundup that was recently retracted – the study was published in the year 2000. It took 25 years for it to be retracted which is significant as this was a really fundamental key study for the case for roundup.
• If we extrapolate this issue and consider issues related to generative AI which is somewhat missed in discussions but is a very important issue. This a very big challenge that we need to face head on because generative AI will make it so much easier to publish misleading science with or without real data.
• Similarly, there has been a lot of “creative” communication happening around the topic of PFAS’s which are fluorinated and alkyl substances that are extremely persistent, so this carbon fluorine bond does not break.
  • In 2021, the OECD published an updated definition of what is a PFAS and what is not. It is any organic molecule with a CFT, CF2, or CF3 group in it with very specific exceptions is considered a PFAS because those mol’s are extremely persistent.
• Last year, we learned that IUPAC had a working group on the definition of PFAS and what was interesting is that the leader of the working group has very close ties to the fluorochemical industry, including joint patents.
  • We know that especially in Europe, there is a push for regulating PFAS as a group.
  • Therefore one can imagine that there is quite a strong interest in excluding some of those compounds from such an approach and very specifically two potentially interesting candidates would be:
    • TFA is an ultra-short chain PAS which is a transformation product that is formed from a variety of precursors including fluorinated gasses but also pesticides and some pharmaceuticals.
    • The other big group relates to plastics. These are fluorinated plastic and fluoropolymers.
      • The debate around fluoropolymers is always that fluoropolymers themselves are decently safe, which I would agree with.
      • We don’t have any strong evidence that fluoropolymers cause harm. However, in the production and at the end of life, those materials, and arguably the majority of all PAS emissions for the last decades, come from this industry.
      • If we look at the life cycle, those are probably the major outputs in terms of PAS emissions. This is a fact that is very frequently ignored and denied by certain parties.
    • We learned that this working group was established and we read some of their outputs in the process. What we found concerning was that they basically mixed up what is a chemical definition with what is a regulatory definition.
    • It was quite clear that their interest was not into clarifying any non-existent question about chemical definitions but rather to modify the definition.
    • Therefore, we wrote this scientific statement in support of the OECD definition.
    • The members of this working group then wrote a rebuttal/response comment to this statement, and they did not declare any conflicts of interest. Even though, when you look up some of the members, you can find sometimes quite recent joint patent registration with fluorochemical industry, which is quite problematic.
  • Another key point is that artists with vested interests can seek to capture organizations with strong credibility. Those can be institutions, groups, and individuals. This example here one of those example for a corporate capture or what could be corporate capture.
  • Finally, coming to the upcoming panel, there is a big danger in that in contrast to the biodiversity and climate panels, the ISP-CWP is a very broad panel in terms of scope. There is not one specific end point that we can identify to really focus on.
    • For climate change, whilst of course a very complex problem, as with biodiversity loss, there is one sort of “silver star” at the end of the road. There is one end point that we can focus on in contrast to chemicals, waste, and pollution. There are many different topics and many different issues and the question on how topics may or may not be prioritized, how the selection occurs.
    • This is something that will be key in determining what kinds of outputs this panel will be able to produce.
  • What is particularly important for this last point is to be extremely open and inclusive to all different types of knowledge holders, especially in terms of early warning and horizon scanning.
  • At the same time, I am worried about the efficiency and the effectiveness of mis/disinformation to shape those priorities.
• Something that many of us did not think enough about yet is the crisis in peer-reviewed literature. We have a crisis of lots of low-quality studies, and this is arguably the more selective type of resources that we have. If we extrapolate this to the general knowledge and opinion formation, we need to systematically and structurally about how to confront this and how to make sure that those priorities are not shaped by vested interests.

Insights on Conflict-of-Interest Policies

Rachel RADVANY | Environmental Health Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law

• Everything that has been spoken about today is part of a larger pattern that we are seeing across spaces and topics, but also across industries. It is a common playbook that all of these industries are using to manufacturing doubt to spread disinformation and to delay policy processes on regulations that would protect human health and the environment.
• For the plenary of the ISP-CWP, CIEL along with colleagues at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) on Monday are publishing a brief talking about this topic in particularly because in the negotiations, over the course of the ISP-CWP, we often hear arguments that “we produce the product, we have the data on the product, and therefore we need to be in the room to help policy makers”.
  • The historical evidence across industries, however, shows that even if these industries that make these harmful products have the data, they often either don’t show it to the public, to regulatory or they actively hide it or try to manipulate the science around their products.
  • The brief uses four case studies to talk about these issues.
  • The first is about PFAS, forever chemicals. There is evidence that producers of PFAS knew about the toxicity of harms 40 years before the public and regulatory were informed of those harms. There is evidence of suppressing unfavorable science that would point to the damages caused by their products.
    • There is also lots of evidence of distorting public discourse and avoiding regulation by, for example, publishing studies that are authored by consultants and employees of the industry.
  • Another example in the brief is BPA, probably the most commonly known bisphenol, which is a group of chemicals that have a lot of human health harms, most notably endocrine disrupting properties.
    • There is a lot of independent scientific evidence out there on the harms of BPA to the endocrine system, linked to many different human health harms.
    • This is an example where the industry tried to undermine independent science through the court system. When the European Chemicals Agency was updating the CA BPA on the candidate list for substances of very high concern for regulation in the European Union, the plastics industry sued three separate times about the different categorizations to try and stop those even though the independent science showed that. They lost each time because the independent science is so strong.
  • The other two examples in the brief are about benzene and pesticides.
• These examples, along with others, show a very broad pattern of undermining independent science to avoid regulation.
• As a campaigner, independent science is super important for the work that we do. It is also important for the work of governments in creating these policies.
• Regarding what we can do about disinformation, firstly entities and people with conflicts of interest, meaning vested interests in the profits of the products that are being discussed for regulation, should not be allowed to influence the policymaking around those products.
• The ISP-CWP is a good case study for this because on the agenda for the topics of discussion next week is the conflict of interest A strong conflict of interest policy is one of the most important enables for the ISP-CWP to effectively do its work and to maintain its credibility.
• The conflict of interest policy needs to cover all interests, and there needs to be a committee that decides that, it shouldn’t be up to the person who’s disclosing the interest, because industry sometimes doesn’t disclose conflict of interest.
  • Experts should be required to disclose all of their interests, and then a committee decides what significant and relevant means.
  • The committee should also be empowered to take action. Whilst transparency is essential to all these processes, it can only get you so far. You need a way of excluding people from discussion that would try and influence these policies to avoid regulation.
• Whilst the ISP-CWP is not legally binding, it is policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. It is very important to maintain its credibility so that it can inform science and that governments, who are doing the policies, can trust it.
• If we have experts in the room who are trying to manipulate the scientific assessment, that is going to lead to a lack of credibility for the panel.
• This has been done before with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which both have conflict of interest polices. There are ways of making this ISP-CWP’s conflict of interest policy the strongest of the three.
• We have a unique opportunity to create a space that is free from these conflict of interest.
  • This has been done before, most famously, in the world of corporate capture by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the article 5.3 of the Tobacco Control Treaty which basically sets up a firewall.
  • The WHO recognized that tobacco companies had vested interests and had systematically been trying to undermine policies that protect human health from the impacts of tobacco, control of tobacco products and they took cation to protect those policies.
  • Governments have a legally binding obligation to protect their policies from the vested interests of tobacco companies.
• As previously mentioned, we are seeing the same patterns across industries, very much including the chemicals, waste and plastic sections. As such, with the ISP-CWP and plastic treaty negotiations, we have a great opportunity to protect these negotiations from these vested interests and take action to protect human health and the environment as the priority, rather than corporate profits.

Open Discussion

Q: What are some of your expectations for negotiations in Geneva next week? Any specific expectations on how we can ensure that the two sessions upcoming next weekend help us move forward on the topic of preventing disinformation?

Patricia VILLARBUBIA-GÓMEZ | Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Umeå

• From the scientist’s coalition perspective and for the plastics treaty and other environmental multilateral agreements, I would start by re-highlighting the importance of identifying, calling out, and debunking the disinformation that is being shared. This includes identifying the different techniques used to cast doubt on robust science and to derail discussions particularly around the topic of plastic production and hazardous chemicals.
• Second, I think it’s also very important that institutions and governments can safeguard against disinformation by ensuring access to independent evidence-based science that is free of conflict of interest. This includes that science-policy interfaces have a robust conflict of interest which is transparent and inclusive.
• Third, institutions and governments can provide clear support mechanisms to publicly acknowledge and address harassment and, or intimidation of independent scientists.
• If we strive for environmental governance that is just, effective, legitimate and credible, then defending scientific integrity is not optional – its foundational.
• Disinformation in the global plastics treaty negotiations undermine evidence-based policy making and it will further delay the meaningful action that processes aim to achieve.
• The scientist coalition will continue to remain engaged and available supporting policy makers with the latest information, the latest independent and up to date scientific evidence and to advance an affective plastic treaty.
• These points are not only relevant for the plastics treaty but also for the ISP-CWP in the coming week.

Gabriel SIGMUND | Member of the Board, International Panel on Chemical Pollution | Assistant Professor, Wageningen University

• We cannot expect self-harmful information to say, “information from people with asset interest or parties with asset interests”. This means that if there is a conflict of interest, those parties with a conflict of interest should, at best, be observers but should not be part of those conversations.
• The table should only be reserved for people without conflict of interest.

Miriam G. Medel GARCIA | Head, Environment Team, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

• I would like to first thank all of the scientists for providing the blueprint for us governments and negotiators.
• It’s not going to be easy and probably the first thing that we need to keep in mind is that it is a very difficult environment right now for the negotiation.
• We have challenges that are known by everyone – it is a difficult moment for multilateralism.
• However, it is very good to have a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, that is science. Science can be the one that guides us.
• My expectation for next week is that we are able to agree on the more political aspects that are still on the table that are known by everyone – the election of the bureau, the election of the seat of the secretariat, the financial rules, rules of procedure etc., so that we can actually concentrate and launch the panel and draw upon the independent, sound, scientific base that is already there.

Q: There is a tension between on one side remaining inclusive, as we’ve heard about the importance of ensuring that traditional knowledge is considered as a source of information that is fully integrated in the process, but on the other hand, the need to tackle vested interest and to deal with conflict of interest. For example, how we deal with fisherfolks who would like to contribute to fishery management. How do we differentiate between different types of knowledge holders as we regulate environmental governance?

Rachel RADVANY | Environmental Health Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law

• Something that often comes up a lot in the plastics treaty is that everyone has interests and that’s definitely true. However, the biggest difference is distinguishing between interests of profit and maintaining certain products that are harmful on the market, versus the interests of protecting human health and the environment.
• For example, for the ISP-CWP, the objective of the panel is to provide scientific data to support governments in creating policies that are protecting human health and the environment. Therefore, interests in protecting human health are very relevant for these panels and as broad of participation and interest in that way as possible is the best possible thing that we can expect from the panel.
• As previous speakers have mentioned, this includes indigenous knowledge, local knowledge, citizen science – all of which are part of independent science, which is a broad term, but it includes a lot of different topics.
• In terms of how we do this, I would start with transparency. We need to require disclosures than be able to have discussions about who should be in the room for these discussions. The panel and whatever way they are determining who can be on the panel, need to be empowered to say no and say that either certain experts have to recuse themselves from parts of the discussion or from the entire discussion or can’t be on the panel or the interdisciplinary committee etc.
• Step one is transparency and then step two is empowering a body within the panel to be able to make those distinctions.

Patricia VILLARBUBIA-GÓMEZ | Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Umeå

• At a personal level as an individual scientist, I think what Rachel said is very important – conflict of interest is not the same as interest and transparency is foundational.
• While talking to some of the right holders and indigenous peoples and people living in fenceline or frontline communities, what we are seeing in their testimonials and in UN reports, especially related to topics like Cancer Alley, is that data is not there because it’s not being collected, because it’s been coerced.
• If we want to have relevant, credible, tangible evidence, we have to let these experts that may not be labeled as scientists but are experts in their own capacity and their information and their experiences should at least be listened to.
• It is not the same as someone or a corporation who has vested interests than a community that is living and suffering the impact of these products and these chemicals.
• Therefore, we have to make a very big distinction between the two and for transparency, inclusivity, equity, and participation to be foundational.

Gabriel SIGMUND | Member of the Board, International Panel on Chemical Pollution | Assistant Professor, Wageningen University

• There’s a difference between being part of the decision and informing the decision.
• With this fisher example, this is someone wo could definitely inform the decision but not necessarily have to take it.
• On a fundamental level, one way to avoid or to improve the situation is just to fund science because at the end of the day, the basis of all those assessments that the panel will be hopefully conducting, will be synthesizing findings from science that other people have done before.
• If we don’t fund science, sufficiently then this opens up the door for vested interests, sometimes openly and sometimes less openly fund science to their own making.

Q: We changed, and what was once impossible to imagine, such as forbidding smoking in closed spaces, eventually became possible. Is it possible to identify specific elements that made this shift achievable?

Tobia SPAMPATTI | Researcher, Max Planck Institute

• That’s a billion-dollar question. In general, every crisis has its own unique solutions, and the industry-based playbook hasn’t changed much. As we discussed today, we see the same tactics used for tobacco now being applied to chemicals, climate, and even the effects of social media and technology on society.
• One key difference, at least for me, is that tobacco involved a single, constrained behavior that was part of society but didn’t have major implications for other parts of societal infrastructure. This is very different from fossil fuels, which are deeply embedded in our infrastructure, or plastics, which are part of everyday life. The more integral something is to society, the more difficult it becomes to act upon it, compared to what was the case for tobacco.
• This also helps explain why we were able to deal relatively effectively with the hole in the ozone layer, but not with climate change. The actions required for ozone were much more constrained than those needed for today’s challenges. So, I realize I’m describing the problems rather than the solutions, but that is the key lesson I take from the tobacco case.

Rachel RADVANY | Environmental Health Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law

• If I could add something, I think we in the plastics space have been very privileged to learn from colleagues who worked on tobacco. Within the civil society and rights-holders coalition engaging on the plastics treaty, there are groups approaching plastics from a tobacco lens, partly because cigarette filters are made of plastic, which is a major focus of their strategy.
• These colleagues have strongly informed our thinking around corporate capture. I very much agree with what Tobia said about plastics and fossil fuels being made integral to society—not only in practical terms, but also through the narratives used to frame them as essential.
• Another key reason for the drastic change in tobacco regulation was litigation during the negotiation of the tobacco treaty. There was a major litigation campaign that exposed internal documents showing that the tobacco industry knew about the harms for decades. That was a real turning point.
• We’re starting to see this with plastics, chemicals, and PFAS. I think PFAS is a great example. This highlights the importance of investing in investigative journalism and litigation to access internal industry documents and make these realities clear. We already have a lot of evidence, and more is coming. Events like this, and spreading awareness, help. That said, plastics, chemicals, and fossil fuels are far more complex and broader issues, so it takes much more to get there. Still, we are moving in that direction.

Sébastian DUYCK | Senior Attorney, Climate & Energy Program, Center for International Environmental Law | Moderator

• My personal wish is that we talk more about the disinformation playbook used by industry, and that in a few years we can also talk about a conflict-of-interest prevention playbook, one that we reuse from other institutions located just a few kilometers from here. Hopefully, there is more we can draw from places where these mechanisms have worked.

Gallery

Documents

• Presentations made during the event

Links

• The Pollution Playbook: How industry blocks regulation of toxic chemicals | Corporate Europe Observatory & CIEL | 2 February 2026