Climate Disinformation as Addressed by the Three Climate Advisory Opinions 

The spread of false or misleading information about climate change is a serious challenge which has already hindered our collective response to the climate emergency. As climate disinformation continues to circulate, its obfuscation of the hard scientific reality of climate change further undermines efforts to act on the necessary scale, with the necessary urgency, to pull us back from the brink of disaster. Deliberate campaigns to sow doubt about the facts underlying the climate emergency have been exposed by various sources (two of many examples are the 2015 investigative journalism series on Exxon from Inside Climate News, and the work of environmental journalist Amy Westervelt), and mirror the tactics employed by the tobacco industry to downplay the carcinogenic effects of cigarette smoking in the 20^th century. Climate misinformation and disinformation is too often reproduced by public officials and world leaders, further undercutting public support for ambitious climate policy. It is therefore of the utmost importance that governments adequately address this problem by promoting widespread understanding of the reality of our climate crisis. 

This Litigation Note from IGSD assesses how the topic of climate disinformation is addressed within the three recent advisory opinions on States’ international law obligations to address climate change (from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2025), and the International Court of Justice (2025)). It is intended to provide a guide for advocates and litigators who wish to better understand the advisory opinions’ takeaways on this topic. The Litigation Note includes an annex listing all of the State obligations identified in Section C.3 of the Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion, spanning not only measures to counter disinformation, but also obligations to produce and disseminate accurate climate information.