As world leaders met recently in Brazil for COP30, conversation in the hallways focused as much on carbon markets as on the one force no country seems prepared for: misinformation.
According to a recent New York Times story, scientists, policymakers and advocates are quietly acknowledging what many have been unwilling to say publicly: we are losing the information war on climate change. Disinformation is outpacing science and sowing doubt, especially in communities already experiencing the most severe climate impacts. For those of us who have spent our careers in public health communication, this moment feels unsettlingly familiar.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, we’ve lived through infodemics long before that word existed.
During Ebola outbreaks, our teams in Liberia and Sierra Leone were inundated with rumors that the disease was caused by politics, not pathogens. During Zika, our teams saw women across the Latin America and Caribbean region rely on radio programs and trusted voices for clarity when institutions failed to provide it. During COVID-19, misinformation spread on WhatsApp faster than any vaccine ever could.
Each crisis taught us the same lesson: people do not act on facts alone. They act on what they understand, what they believe and who they trust.
Climate change is no different. The science may be vast, but if it doesn’t connect to daily lives – to the health of individuals and their families, household security, and community identity – it might as well not exist.
In Togo, where CCP recently launched a national climate and health communication initiative, the stakes are clear. Rising heat, flooding, coastal erosion and shifting rainfall patterns are putting health and livelihoods under pressure and making communities more vulnerable. Vector-borne and waterborne diseases and heat-related illness are projected to intensify, especially among pregnant women, children and rural households.
When our team sits with residents in Lomé, they are not asking why the planet is getting hotter. They are asking why their children are getting sick more often, why crops are failing, and why rain no longer comes when expected. Responding to these questions requires the same mix of listening, trust-building and culturally grounded approaches that have anchored our global health work.
In many ways, climate communication is where public health was decades ago: still learning that warnings and technical information alone are not enough to shift behavior. Through decades of work in social and behavior change – from award-winning radio dramas in Tanzania that reshaped attitudes toward family planning to the work in Nigeria that helped normalize malaria testing to the rumor-tracking networks built across more than a dozen countries – CCP and our partners learned that information has power only when people see themselves in it.
These lessons translate directly to climate action. Rumor monitoring systems that once identified fears about COVID-19 vaccines could just as easily detect emerging narratives that heat alerts are exaggerated or that floods are acts of fate rather than predictable climate patterns.
Entertainment-education approaches that helped spark conversations about reproductive health could be adapted to tell stories of climate adaptation – families preparing for storms, farmers adjusting planting practices, and communities safeguarding water sources. Real-time digital dashboards that helped track COVID rumors could help governments respond quickly when misleading climate stories begin trending online.
These are not new innovations. They are proven systems and approaches capable of protecting lives when deployed earlier and collaboratively.
We already see communities tuning out. Climate change feels abstract, politicized or hopeless. Meanwhile, powerful interests are shaping public perception with targeted narratives that undermine urgency or trust in scientific consensus. In this environment, publishing accurate reports – no matter how detailed – is not enough.
This is not merely a communication challenge. It is a public safety emergency. When entire communities believe climate change is exaggerated, inevitable or fabricated, they are less likely to adopt lifesaving adaptation behaviors or demand the policies that protect them.
The hopeful news is that we don’t need to start from scratch. Public health has already developed a playbook to fight disinformation and drive collective action: listen first and understand what matters most to people; build trust by working with messengers who reflect the community; elevate lived experience and not only distant forecasts; respond quickly to rumors before they become entrenched beliefs; and use storytelling and emotion because information alone rarely moves people.
These tools have helped save lives during epidemics. They can also help save lives in the climate crisis.
Climate change is a scientific crisis, but it is also an information crisis. If we want people to protect themselves and their communities, we must give them more than data. We must give them understanding. We must give them stories that feel real. And we must elevate trusted voices who speak not at people, but with them.
Public health learned this the hard way. Climate action does not have to.
Debora B. Freitas López is the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
