The Right to Science Under Threat | Geneva Rights and Climate Talks

About this Event

Protecting the right to science is a collective imperative — our shared responsibility to ensure that knowledge remains open, rigorous, and free from political or commercial interference. However, today, science is coming under such severe attacks that the ground to undertake real, meaningful climate action is being threatened.

In her report to the 59th session of the Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change highlight also that extensive research has documented the fossil fuel sector’s evolving strategies to keep the public uninformed about the severity of climate change and about the role of fossil fuels in causing it (“the playbook”). This has undermined the protection of all human rights, including the rights to information, education and science, affecting the exercise of civil and political rights and preventing effective human rights protection that are negatively impacted by climate change, for over six decades.

Leading experts speaking at this event will review the current situation and exchange on perspectives.

Speakers

By order of intervention.

Elisa MORGERA

UN Special Rapporteur on climate change

Lindsey Fielder COOK

Interim Deputy Director and Representative for Climate Change, QUNO

Kate CELL

Senior Climate Campaign Manager, Union of Concerned Scientists

Kathy MULVEY

Accountability Campaign Director, Climate & Energy Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

Yves LADOR

Representative of Earthjustice to the United Nations in Geneva | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Summary

Keynote

Elisa MORGERA | UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change

• Three major areas of science, mainstream climate science, biodiversity science, and the scientific understanding of toxic pollution, along with a fourth area, health science, are essential for understanding how climate change impacts human rights. As highlighted in last year’s report on access to information and human rights in the context of climate change, this scientific knowledge is necessary for human rights holders to comprehend the effects of climate change on their rights, to identify which rights are being strengthened or threatened, and to understand who is most affected.
• Such information is also crucial for evaluating whether governments and public authorities are taking sufficient action to protect against the negative impacts of climate change. Public authorities themselves rely on integrated scientific knowledge to fulfill their human rights obligations in this context.
• The right to science, particularly the right to fairly share in the benefits of scientific advancement without discrimination, remains central. This implies obligations for states to prioritize scientific research on key issues affecting the most vulnerable populations, to allocate adequate public funding for this research, and to ensure that scientific progress is applied in ways that support the protection of human rights.
• States are obliged to protect the public from disinformation and misinformation, especially when driven by vested interests. This includes ensuring public access to independent technical expertise in support of the rights to access information and participate in decision-making. Access to information is a foundational right that enables the exercise of all other human rights in the climate context.
• This year’s findings also draw on the extensive contributions of researchers, many of whom have been targets of attacks for their work in climate science, who have documented the fossil fuel sector’s role over six decades in withholding knowledge about the environmental consequences of fossil fuel extraction and use. These efforts included a range of evolving strategies to deny climate change, obscure the role of fossil fuels, and, even after scientific consensus was reached, to continue spreading misinformation and disinformation in order to delay effective climate action.
• The ongoing disinformation efforts by the fossil fuel industry are accompanied by attacks on climate scientists, journalists, and environmental human rights defenders. These activities include abuse of the judicial system and growing influence over public policy spaces, such as the climate COP, where fossil fuel lobbyists increasingly outnumber the delegations of countries most affected by climate change.
• Beyond international forums, similar practices occur at all levels, from local to global, shaping public debate and decision-making in ways that are undue and detrimental. The Special Rapporteur’s report highlights the depth of available research and the extensive evidence showing how the industry has followed a disinformation playbook. These actions themselves constitute violations of the rights to information, education, and science. They have also undermined civil and political rights in the climate context and reduced the effectiveness of efforts to protect human rights from climate impacts.
• In response, the report puts forward a series of recommendations, centered on the concept of “defossilizing knowledge.” This involves recognizing and addressing the long-term influence of fossil fuel interests in shaping public discourse, scientific inquiry, and policy development. Untangling these influences is essential for creating well-informed public debate and inclusive, participatory processes. This defossilization of knowledge is positioned as a necessary foundation for the broader goal of defossilizing economies.
• A range of actors and actions, legislative measures, and responsibilities across the business sector are identified as necessary to support the defossilization process. Ensuring the public has a complete understanding is essential: defossilization and the phasing out of fossil fuels are not limited to energy transition alone, but extend across the entire economy, including food and health systems.
• This shift carries deep intergenerational implications, which are well documented, and it may represent the most significant health intervention possible. Though often under-prioritized in climate strategies, defossilization is framed as a vital measure with far-reaching benefits for the protection of human rights, particularly in addressing intersecting planetary crises such as economic inequality.
• Understanding the human rights impacts of fossil fuels across their full life cycle, from exploration and extraction to production, transport, combustion, and waste management, reveals that fossil fuels are not only a central driver of climate change but also intensify its effects. They do so by degrading natural systems essential to climate regulation, harming human health, disrupting cultural practices, and weakening overall human well-being, which are all crucial for resilience to climate change.
• A narrow focus on decarbonization, often referred to as “carbon tunnel vision,” while essential, fails to account for these broader negative impacts. This limited perspective can obscure the urgency and multifaceted benefits of phasing out fossil fuels. A more comprehensive approach would not only enhance climate mitigation efforts but also advance international objectives related to human rights and planetary health.

Panel Discussion

Lindsey Fielder COOK | Interim Deputy Director and Representative for Climate Change, QUNO

• The Quaker United Nations Office became an accredited observer of the IPCC in 2017 to help protect the integrity of climate science and support scientists working under significant political pressure. At that time, few observers spoke at plenaries or addressed human rights-based approaches. Their involvement aimed to ensure that scientific findings were accurately communicated to broader audiences, emphasizing urgent, healthy, rights-based, and scalable climate solutions.
• A key concern was maintaining strong risk language in IPCC reports and resisting attempts to weaken it. Although the IPCC, established in 1988 and a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, does not conduct research itself, it compiles global findings into comprehensive assessments. The majority of participating scientists contribute voluntarily.
• The IPCC stands apart from negotiations like those at Bonn or COPs, which are driven by politics and power, by preserving scientific integrity. Co-chairs and lead authors can reject state-proposed language changes that would compromise their conclusions. The IPCC is also increasingly incorporating perspectives from the Global South, indigenous knowledge, and non-traditional research sources, providing a more holistic and grounded understanding of climate risks and solutions.
• The IPCC is increasingly under intense political pressure, especially as global efforts to tackle the root causes of climate change, primarily the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, remain deeply insufficient. This pressure has pushed IPCC scientists to include options in their reports that do not address the root causes of climate change and, in some cases, introduce new risks to people and the planet.
• A core challenge lies in the IPCC’s mandate to be “policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.” While this makes the IPCC more acceptable to governments, because it does not dictate national policies, it also forces the inclusion of policy options that are often ineffective, inequitable, not cost-efficient, and harmful to people and ecosystems.
• These options are considered “policy relevant” simply because they exist, even if they fail to meet basic criteria for sustainable and just climate action. In contrast, transformative and science-backed measures that could be deemed “policy prescriptive”, like urgent fossil fuel phase-outs or systemic economic reforms, are often sidelined or weakened.
• The importance of preserving strong risk language in IPCC reports is paramount. Without a clear and honest framing of climate risks, the world risks wasting precious time during what is already a rapidly narrowing window to secure a livable future.
• This tension is playing out in real time: delays in agreeing on the timeline for the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7), due to contentious negotiations at plenaries in Turkey, Bulgaria, and China, underscore how political interference is now impacting even procedural elements of the IPCC process. Yet, despite the lack of consensus on deadlines, the IPCC has managed to move forward by nominating authors and continuing its work, holding on to its scientific integrity in a difficult political landscape.
• Protecting the right to science in the context of climate change requires a deliberate commitment to scientific integrity, particularly within the work of the IPCC. A crucial first step is ensuring that the IPCC stands strong in naming the root causes of global temperature rise, unsustainable energy use, destructive land use changes, and deeply entrenched consumption and production patterns. Among these, the extraction and burning of fossil fuels remain the most significant drivers, responsible for 81 to 91 percent of historic anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, as highlighted in Alissa’s report. Acknowledging these causes explicitly is not just scientifically accurate but essential for honest public discourse. Political discomfort must never justify the softening of language or the omission of truth.
• One area where political pressure has clearly interfered with science is in the terminology surrounding fossil fuels. During the approval of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, some states objected to even the mention of “fossil fuels,” leading to a last-minute compromise where the terms “abated” and “unabated” were inserted. However, at the time, the IPCC had no shared definition of “abated,” and there was limited scientific consensus on what constituted effective carbon abatement. Technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) were often cited in this context, but they remain unproven at scale, expensive, less effective, and in many cases are currently used to expand fossil fuel extraction rather than reduce emissions. These are not benign alternatives. When the synthesis report that followed omitted risk language around CCS, it was only after sustained pressure from observers that a limited warning was included, and even then, only as a footnote. This kind of quiet revision threatens the public’s understanding of the real risks and consequences of relying on such technologies.
• It’s equally important to reaffirm that achieving “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions cannot be reduced to technological fixes. There is currently no scalable, low-risk technology that can substitute for the urgent need to rapidly reduce emissions through structural change. Real transformation means phasing out fossil fuels, dramatically increasing energy efficiency, conserving resources, and scaling up renewable energy. Net-zero, when divorced from these core actions, becomes a hollow goal, one that risks legitimizing delay and distraction rather than progress.
• Furthermore, the IPCC’s guiding principle of being “policy relevant but not policy prescriptive” must not be used to sidestep responsibility. This balance was intended to allow scientists to inform policy without dictating it, but it also leaves space for weak or even harmful policy options to be presented as legitimate choices. It becomes even more dangerous when risk language is weakened or omitted, as happened in the case of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the AR6 synthesis report. In one instance, the inclusion of the word “very” before “high risk” when discussing large-scale CDR dramatically softened the perceived danger, making it easier for such methods to be pursued without sufficient scrutiny. After objections, the word was removed, but the fact that such language can be inserted at all demonstrates the extent of political influence and the vigilance required to counter it.
• A recent case involving carbon dioxide removal from marine environments further highlights this point. In China, a methodology report risked legitimizing marine CDR without adequate research or public understanding. Thankfully, a coalition of high-ambition states and human rights-based observers succeeded in delaying its approval. Their concern was well-founded: these technologies could carry serious ecological risks, especially in fragile marine ecosystems, and many states have already agreed to moratoriums on such methods. Including them prematurely would greenlight experimentation that science is not yet prepared to support.
• Ultimately, the IPCC’s responsibility is not only to present the science but to protect the integrity of the scientific process, especially as it comes under increasing political and economic pressure. Scientists must feel empowered to speak truthfully, not intimidated into silence or compromise. The right to science means the right to truthful, transparent, and independent knowledge, one that serves people and the planet, not vested interests. Upholding this right is foundational to all climate action and to the protection of human rights in a warming world.

Kate CELL | Senior Climate Campaign Manager, Union of Concerned Scientists

• The Union of Concerned Scientists, founded in 1969 by MIT graduate students and professors, has played a longstanding role in promoting and protecting climate science and scientists while serving as NGO observers in COP and IPCC processes, with staff contributing to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC. To support advocacy against misinformation, a ‘disinformation playbook’ was created in 2017 to lay out predictable corporate tactics used to undermine public understanding and trust in science, demonstrating how industries from tobacco to fossil fuels strategically deploy disinformation to protect their interests, and using this framework publicly helps people recognize and resist these tactics.
• The fossil fuel industry not only promotes climate change disinformation but also funds disinformation campaigns on multiple societal fronts to gain political power, particularly in the US, by undermining rights such as voting, protesting, reproductive care, and trans rights. There is now abundant evidence showing the US government enacting the fossil fuel industry’s agenda, including dismantling climate science efforts by reducing public access to congressionally mandated and publicly funded climate data and reports, such as the recent removal of the simplest online path to the Fifth National Climate Assessment and other climate literacy resources.
• The systematic dismantling of US climate science activities, including reductions in monitoring through weather balloons, sea ice, and snowpack observations, not only affects the US public’s access to climate information but also harms the global scientific community, which relies heavily on US-based climate data for research and policy planning. This global consequence underlines how domestic political decisions to suppress climate science extend their negative impact internationally, weakening global climate resilience and informed decision-making.
• Online platforms and search engines are highlighted as allies of the fossil fuel industry in disinformation efforts, with both sectors profiting from the creation and spread of climate disinformation, compounding the challenges faced by those advocating for climate action and accurate scientific information. The role of big tech in amplifying fossil fuel disinformation requires scrutiny and structural intervention, as it strengthens the industry’s power to obstruct effective climate solutions while misleading the public.
• A source of hope in the current landscape is the progress made in Bonn through the UN, UNESCO, and member states on the Global Initiative for Information Integrity, with efforts to place combating climate disinformation onto the COP agenda through the proposed information integrity initiative by the COP presidency. This development is seen as a significant and encouraging step toward addressing the systemic spread of climate disinformation and supporting the integrity of climate science within global negotiations and public discourse.

Kathy MULVEY | Accountability Campaign Director, Climate & Energy Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

• The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report titled Decades of Deceit, which exposes the long history of climate disinformation by major fossil fuel corporations. The report reveals that over 94% of industrial carbon dioxide emissions since 1959 come from just 122 fossil fuel and cement companies, many of which were aware of the climate risks posed by their products decades ago. For example, warnings about rising carbon dioxide melting ice caps and causing catastrophic global effects were communicated to industry executives as early as 1959 and the early 1980s.
• Despite clear scientific evidence, these companies deliberately misled the public and policymakers while emissions surged. The report also highlights ongoing greenwashing efforts, such as ExxonMobil’s underfunded biofuels projects promoted for public relations rather than real impact, and its involvement in schemes to intimidate climate advocates.
• These findings emphasize the urgent need for governments, investors, and the public to increase pressure on fossil fuel corporations to stop disinformation, support science-based policies, pay their fair share of climate damages, and accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels globally.
• The Union of Concerned Scientists has been calling on fossil fuel companies to stop spreading disinformation and greenwashing regarding climate science, public policy, and their corporate actions.
• There is a strong push for elected officials, investors, financiers, experts, and the public to demand these companies cease obstructing science-based policies and their implementation. They should also pay a fair share of the costs associated with climate damages, adaptation, and the broader environmental impacts of fossil fuel production and use. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for fossil fuel companies to accelerate efforts toward a just and rapid global phase-out of fossil fuels. These demands align closely with the conclusions of the Special Rapporteur’s report.

Yves LADOR | Representative of Earthjustice to the United Nations in Geneva | Moderator

• The current debate at the United Nations around the annual resolution on human rights and climate change reflects growing tension over whether the role of fossil fuels should be explicitly addressed. While the current draft omits mention of fossil fuels, a proposed amendment seeks to include language that acknowledges the need for pathways away from fossil fuel dependence in order to protect human rights. Although the proposed language remains weak, it marks a shift, bringing the issue to the negotiation table and revealing how politically charged this conversation remains.
• In parallel, concerns have deepened over the integrity of climate science itself. The U.S. government’s recent actions have far-reaching consequences for the global scientific community. Data collection tools, such as the Argo ocean monitoring network, rely heavily on U.S. support. When American scientists are blocked from publishing peer-reviewed research, due to political pressure or restrictions, entire international studies risk being silenced. This is not merely an attack on academic freedom, but a disruption of the continuity and accessibility of vital scientific data.
• Such interference undermines the ability to accurately assess climate trends and creates dangerous openings for disinformation. Without access to complete, peer-reviewed evidence, scientists may be forced to rely on inference, opening them to attacks questioning their credibility. These developments pose a direct threat to the right to science, which includes public access to scientific knowledge and data essential for informed decision-making on climate change.
• The urgency of this issue raises key questions for the human rights system: How can it respond to the suppression of scientific research and knowledge? While the problem is often framed as a national matter, academic freedom within individual countries, it clearly has global consequences. The destruction of the right to science is more than a domestic issue; it affects humanity’s collective ability to respond to the climate crisis. This calls for an international reaction and for the human rights system to take a stronger role in defending scientific integrity as a cornerstone of human rights.

Discussion & Q&A

Question 1: How can the human rights system respond to the systematic destruction of the right to science occurring globally, given that current discussions on science and academic freedom often remain framed as national issues, while the situation appears to be much more severe? What is your evaluation of this situation, and how do you see the human rights system contributing concretely to address it?

Mylene BIDAULT | Human Rights Officer at OHCHR

• The human rights system is currently too weak to effectively address the destruction of the right to science, and there is a broader lack of understanding of science and knowledge as a common public good. Efforts to work collaboratively within the system, particularly through special rapporteurs, do occur but are insufficient, requiring deeper, more systematic cooperation to confront these challenges adequately.
• Fossil fuel industries not only influence public narratives but also encroach upon universities to block and shape information in their favour, using academic spaces to suppress alternative narratives. While there is awareness of these tactics, the human rights system lacks both the research capacity and the necessary information from NGOs and other stakeholders to investigate or respond effectively, acting only when specific, actionable information is received.
• There is a need to expand the concept of “defossilizing knowledge” into a wider “defossilizing culture,” addressing how advertising and consumer culture promote certain narratives while blocking artistic or alternative narratives. The tactics used by industries to control narratives are consistent across sectors, including cultural spaces, but current approaches within cultural rights work do not sufficiently challenge these dynamics.
• The understanding of cultural rights often focuses on the right to conduct one’s own ways of life, but this perspective requires deeper reflection, particularly in a digital age and in the context of mobility becoming a central element of culture. There is insufficient interrogation of how cultural rights intersect with environmental and scientific challenges within this evolving context.
• Regarding the situation in the United States, the system primarily learns about developments through media reports and lacks direct requests for action, making it impossible to initiate inquiries or take formal action. Coordinated work across human rights mechanisms and the receipt of information from the ground are essential to enable an effective response to the systematic suppression of scientific knowledge and to protect the right to science globally.

Benjamin SCHACHTER | Coordinator, Environment and Climate Change Team, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

• Building a clear understanding among people and scientists that there is a right to benefit from scientific progress and its applications, emphasizing that this fundamental right is often missing from discussions and needs to be recognized and integrated within broader conversations on scientific and policy matters.
• Ensuring that environmental negotiations and policy-making processes uphold the right to be free from conflicts of interest, misinformation, and disinformation, with a strong commitment that decision-making processes must remain evidence-based and science-based to ensure credible, effective environmental action.
• Actively engaging with major science policy platforms, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Open-Ended Working Group for a Science Policy Platform on Pollution, to advance universal access to accurate, science-based information regarding climate harms and environmental challenges.
• Addressing the threats faced by independent scientists, including harassment, persecution, or loss of grants, which often occur when conducting critical research in climate and environmental areas, recognizing that protecting scientists is essential to ensure the continued flow of independent, credible scientific information into policy processes.
• Incorporating indigenous peoples’ knowledge and other forms of local knowledge as scientific knowledge, acknowledging their critical role in providing solutions to environmental and climate-related problems, and ensuring these perspectives are valued alongside conventional scientific frameworks to create holistic, inclusive approaches to environmental sustainability.

Closing

Elisa MORGERA | UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change

• Government representatives in climate and human rights spaces often perceive science as a national process rather than recognizing it as an international network of efforts, limiting how they integrate science into climate action. Science and knowledge production are frequently seen as activities that occur before climate action, rather than as processes that should happen alongside climate action to ensure that human rights dimensions, the voices of diverse knowledge holders, and the lived experiences of those most affected by climate change are considered and included throughout action and decision-making processes.
• Co-producing knowledge with affected communities is essential to prevent disproportionate impacts and to account for intersectionality within climate responses, positioning knowledge production as a central element of human rights obligations in climate contexts. States have obligations to protect and appropriately fund research, aligning research priorities with the human rights impacts of climate change, while universities bear responsibility for the funding they accept, the protection of researchers, and the advancement of independent research that serves public interest.
• Private finance also carries responsibility for the way it funds research, ensuring that it supports independent and rights-aligned climate research rather than interests that obstruct effective solutions. Addressing the cultural impacts of decades-long fossil fuel industry strategies that have shaped societal assumptions about climate problems and solutions is essential, as these embedded assumptions influence how education, policy, and general perceptions frame climate action, often reinforcing a narrow carbon tunnel vision that diverts attention from root causes and transformative solutions.
• There is a need to defossilize culture and education at all levels by integrating an understanding of how fossil fuel industry strategies have affected climate discourse and by re-examining commonly used terms in climate conversations that may be rooted in narratives designed to delay effective action. Breaking away from these embedded frames is crucial for identifying true solutions within the limited timeframe available to prevent catastrophic climate impacts, ensuring that climate action targets root causes and prioritizes systemic change over incremental or misdirected measures.

Photo Gallery

Documents

• Presentations made during the event

Links

• Environment @ 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Rights and Climate Talks