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Google, UN Partner to Fight Misinformation on Climate Change

For Google, the search features are part of a larger push to build products and tools that empower people to better understand and limit their personal environmental impact — and highlights verified sources of climate data in 12 languages.

Published 2 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Image: Los Muertos Crew/Pexels

Google and the United Nations have partnered to ensure that when people google “climate change,” they’re presented with a variety of verified, authoritative sources of information in 12 languages. In addition to organic search results, Google is surfacing short and easy-to-understand information panels and visuals on the causes and effects of climate change, as well as individual actions that people can take to help tackle the climate crisis.

“We are happy to collaborate with Google to ensure that factual, trustworthy content about climate change is available to as wide a global audience as possible,” said Melissa Fleming, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. “Misinformation is so widespread these days that it threatens progress and understanding on many critical issues, including climate. The need for accurate, science-based information on a subject like climate change to rise to the top of searches has therefore never been greater.”

In his 2021 report, Our Common Agenda, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for tackling the “infodemic” of misinformation plaguing the world and proposed introducing a global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information and facts and science in public discourse.

For Google, the search features are part of a larger push to build products and tools that empower people to better understand and limit their personal environmental impact — adding to a growing arsenal of educational tools that help employees and consumers do their part to rein in their carbon footprint in a variety of areas.

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“Global search interest in ‘how to be sustainable’ reached an all-time high this year,” said Chris LaRosa, Senior Product Manager, when the climate search feature was first launched in three languages last October. “At Google, we believe technology has a crucial role to play in a carbon-free future and we want to help people make more sustainable choices every day.”

Following the English, French and Spanish versions rolled out last fall, UN climate content is now also featured on Google Search in Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese.