Planetary Health Matters: Climate disinformation is getting worse


A World Economic Forum report identified misinformation and disinformation as among the most severe short-term threats facing the world today. — 123rf

DISINFORMATION has been consistently on my mind this month. A few weeks ago, I attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where it was a hot topic.

In the recently released WEF Global Risks Report 2026, misinformation and disinformation were identified as among the most severe short-term threats facing the world. The report makes clear that increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now scale misleading narratives faster, cheaper, and more persuasively than ever before, eroding trust in institutions, science, expertise, and even reality itself. As the saying goes, “A lie can travel half the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”.

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