Call for Partnerships to Strengthen Information Integrity on Climate Change

Deadline: 6-Jul-25

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is seeking proposals from not-for-profit organizations to strengthen information integrity on climate change and address major challenges in this field.

The current rise of mis/disinformation on the triple planetary crisis requires active and right-based actions to contrast disinformation related to climate change. The initiative addresses specific urgent needs:

• Disinformation is not only growing but evolving, with the aim of delaying action, undermining scientific consensus, and discrediting evidence-based policies. This phenomenon directly impacts public understanding, social cohesion, policymaking, and climate action. UNESCO is seeking to promote innovative, strategic, and effective ways to tackle disinformation, providing critical evidence to expose and counter false narratives, fostering informed decision-making, and strengthening science-based policymaking.
• Disinformation presents risks to human rights defenders, scientists, and journalists covering environmental issues.
• Despite the urgency of the triple planetary crisis, comparative studies show that research on the role of disinformation is still very limited. The Initiative aims to fill this research and knowledge gap.
• Existing research on climate disinformation is predominantly focused on high and upper-middle economies, published in English. Low and lower-middle economies, despite being the most affected by the planetary crisis, are underrepresented in research.
• Instead of analyzing climate disinformation from a content-only perspective, this Initiative aims to investigate how disinformation is produced, financed, disseminated, and its impact on policy-making and public narratives.
• Evidence produced by such a programme can directly contribute to creating robust, evidence-based information integrity policies, tackling climate disinformation at a strategic level, providing policymakers with the tools and data needed to implement effective solutions.
• The policies to bring to reality the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a central element of the Paris Agreement and the key pilar of COP30, to be hosted by Brazil, might be severely undermined if disinformation about climate change (and about the policies to tackle it) aren’t efficiently countered.

Objectives

• The objective of this call for partnership is to provide financial support to multiple local, national, regional, and international not-for-profit entities (Implementation partners) proposing interventions that contribute to safeguarding information integrity on climate change within research, investigative journalism, and strategic communications:
  • Increasing the information quality and integrity on climate change, upholding its value to contribute to informed public discourse, policymaking, and the promotion of freedom of expression, leading to more evidence-based climate action.
  • Gathering and producing evidence and knowledge relating to mis/disinformation and climate change, including exposing methods and strategies, channels, financing models, and other aspects allowing to understand the information ecosystem and its trends.
  • Supporting investigative journalism actions.
  • Supporting strategic science-based communication actions.

Funding Information

• Budget per project will range from USD 30,000 to USD 150,000. Applications can be submitted in English, French and Spanish.

Eligibility Criteria

• A UNESCO Implementation Partner is an entity with a not-for-profit status to which UNESCO has entrusted partially or fully the implementation of programmes or projects specified in a signed document (Form 7-10, Annex 4 attached for information), along with the assumption of full responsibility and accountability for the effective use of resources and the delivery of outputs as set forth in such a document.
• Mandatory eligibility criteria:
  • Legal Status:
    • This Call for Partnerships is open to not-for-profit entities only (Non-Governmental/Civil Society Organizations, Research institutes, Universities, Not-for-profit investigative journalism organizations, Governmental entities dedicated to the core topics of this call, and other relevant not-for-profit entities).
    • Entities registered as not-for-profit for at least 2 years from the closure date of this call.
    • Entities from low-income economies and/or lower middle-income economies and/or with a strong focus on these locations are strongly encouraged to apply.

For more information, visit UNESCO.