Across South and Southeast Asia, climate action is being subverted by a deliberate, calculated strategy: the weaponization of climate disinformation. Governments and corporations are increasingly deploying misleading narratives – ranging from greenwashing to outright denial – to marginalize Indigenous peoples, facilitate land dispossession, and obscure ecological harm.
This is a systematic campaign that threatens both human rights and the environmental integrity of the region. As these falsehoods harden into public consensus, the standard model of environmental reporting is no longer sufficient.
In this clouded information environment, constructive journalism has a critical role to play. By scrutinizing official claims, exposing false climate solutions, and elevating the lived experiences of Indigenous communities, it can help ensure that climate governance is guided by transparency, accountability, and justice.
This is the key argument presented in Asia Centre’s newly published regional report, “Climate Disinformation in Asia: A Deliberate Strategy Against Indigenous Peoples.” The report synthesizes the findings from the broader series of country baseline studies to serve as a toolkit to advance the practice of constructive journalism in response to the growing challenge of climate disinformation in Asia.
The report finds that, across the region, climate disinformation is deployed as a deliberate strategy by selected corporations and governments against Indigenous peoples to access their ancestral lands for development.
Four main forms of climate disinformation are apparent. The first is one-sided media coverage, which selectively amplifies government and corporate narratives while downplaying ecological harm, Indigenous displacement, and government and corporate accountability for these harms.
The second is greenwashing, where corporations use misleading environmental claims and sustainability branding to obscure harmful practices and create a false impression of climate progress.
The third is the promotion of false climate solutions, which present unsustainable or exploitative programs as genuine climate action despite evidence of ecological harm and limited climate benefits.
The fourth is the outright denial of accountability, whereby governments and corporations reject, minimize, or deflect evidence of environmental harm and human rights abuses while shifting responsibility onto Indigenous communities, activists, and other marginalized groups.
In addition, two regional-level trends can be observed. One, climate disinformation is increasingly reinforced by transnational political and corporate interests that replicate extractive narratives across borders. Two, digital platforms’ inability to moderate disinformation allows such content to proliferate.
Such concerted deployment of climate disinformation has a significant consequence on the Indigenous peoples of the region. The report documents five interconnected impacts. First, climate disinformation excludes Indigenous communities from decision-making processes and undermines their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) on projects affecting their land and livelihood.
Second, it erodes traditional knowledge systems and ways of life by portraying Indigenous practices as inferior to state-led and technocratic approaches and therefore justifying their erasure.
Third, it facilitates land dispossession and forced displacement by presenting harmful development, conservation and climate initiatives as necessary or beneficial.
Fourth, it contributes to the criminalization of Indigenous peoples and their advocates through false evidence of criminality.
Finally, it enables intimidation and physical violence against Indigenous communities and environmental defenders by portraying them as environmental threats, criminals or obstacles to development.
To address these challenges, the report points to the need for a coordinated response involving governments, international organizations, civil society, the media, technology companies, and Indigenous communities themselves.
Central recommendations include strengthening legal recognition of Indigenous identity and rights, ensuring meaningful implementation of FPIC, improving accountability for climate disinformation, protecting Indigenous land and environmental defenders, and supporting Indigenous-led monitoring and media initiatives.
At the regional level, stronger regional cooperation is needed to counter transnational disinformation networks, corporate greenwashing, and the growing risks posed by AI-enabled climate disinformation.
The report cautions that all of this is unfolding at a time when fact-checking institutions are under increasing strain across Asia and beyond. Hence, constructive journalism has an even more critical role to play.
By investigating one-sided reporting, exposing greenwashing and false climate solutions, and elevating Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences, it can help counter climate disinformation and ensure that climate governance is guided by transparency, accountability and justice rather than misleading narratives.
Ultimately, addressing climate disinformation requires recognizing Indigenous peoples not merely as vulnerable populations, but as rights holders whose knowledge, participation and self-determination are essential to effective and just climate action.
This op-ed is based on Asia Centre’s new report, “Climate Disinformation in Asia: A Deliberate Strategy Against Indigenous Peoples.” Download the full report here. For more information about the Asia Centre, visit asiacentre.org.
