Meteorologists expect the El Niño now building in the Pacific Ocean to be the strongest on record, peaking between September and December. This recurring warming of surface ocean waters occurs irregularly every two to seven years, temporarily raising global temperatures and reshaping rainfall worldwide.

The UN World Food Programme estimates the El Niño on the horizon could push, at minimum, 49 million people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027 – across 45 countries already struggling to feed their populations, with the sharpest increases in Central America and southern Africa (WFP, 2026).

In South Asia, new research shows that global warming is strengthening the link between El Niño and drought in India. In Latin America, maize and bean harvests may fail in fragile parts of Nicaragua, and irrigated crops in Colombia and northeastern Brazil will most likely face water restrictions. This impacts food security further away as well; the EU imports close to 190 billion Euro of food a year from the regions most exposed. And in Europe directly, low river flows threaten hydropower and agriculture.

Those are the numbers. What concerns us at WACC just as much, however, is the story that will be told about the numbers – and how that story might affect action on climate change.

As much of the media coverage of the issue explains, El Niño is a natural cycle. However, scientists are clear that this year’s fires and heatwaves, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, are driven by fossil fuel emissions, not by El Niño, which only adds perhaps a tenth or two of a degree to a long-term warming trend.

This is creating fertile ground for disinformation campaigns seeking to deny or minimize climate change. Most advance the notion that the extreme weather events we are experiencing are a naturally occurring phenomenon and not caused by human activity.

This pattern is already visible. When Europe’s record heatwave arrived in June, social media filled with claims that the temperatures were nothing unusual, citing London heatwaves from the 1970s. After the 2024 floods in eastern Spain that killed more than 230 people, false claims spread that dams had been deliberately dismantled and that European river restoration rules caused the disaster, disinformation amplified by far-right Vox politicians.

Disinformation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon but “a tactic” the powerful use to defend the status quo, notes Philip Newell of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) network. It appears, however, that the tactic has shifted.

Outright denial has largely given way to attacks on climate policy itself, amplified by generative AI and spiking whenever a heatwave, flood, or drought makes the news – which is precisely when affected communities need trustworthy information the most.

This is precisely why democratic and people-centred communication and information ecosystems, especially at the local level, are vital climate stability infrastructures that protect us all, not an optional extra.

Our partners across the world show what that looks like. For example:

• Grupo COMUNICARTE has spent decades among the people in Colombia’s high-altitude Andean páramos ecosystem, weaving conservation into local recipes, elders’ stories, and mountain legends until protection became something communities owned rather than something imposed by the authorities.
• Nepal’s Indigenous Rights Foundation broadcasts dialogues between Indigenous communities, government officials, and hydropower developers, reaching roughly a million people and making decision-makers publicly accountable.
• In the Niger Delta in Nigeria, the Media Awareness and Justice Initiative helps communities collect their own environmental data, turning complaints dismissed as anecdotal into evidence-backed reports.

None of these interventions are fact-checking operations, which is how disinformation tends to be tackled. Rather, these initiatives do something that is both more difficult and more durable – they build trust, they treat farmers and elders as knowledge holders alongside scientists, and they keep local narratives at the centre.

Disinformation struggles in places where people already know whom to believe.

At the UN climate change conference COP30 last November, 12 governments signed a first-ever “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change,” promising what Brazil’s president, João Brant, called “a wave of truth.”

This is a welcome development. However, in most of the places El Niño will hit hardest, the key channels informing communities and fighting disinformation – community radio stations, Indigenous media networks, and local journalists – work on very little.

Funding, supporting, and protecting them is not charity nor is it optional. It is climate action.

Photo: Toa55/Shutterstock

However, as the infrastructure needed to support the growing artificial intelligence sector is built, the extractivist dimension of the digital is reaching new levels of complexity. On the one hand, there are the environmental implications of this infrastructure, which is creating water stress in places like Mexico, Chile, and Spain thanks to massive data centres, many of which emit enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. 

On the other hand, there is the economic impact. Most of these data centres are established without contributing in any meaningful way to local development. For instance, just this past week Open AI announced the construction of a US$25 billion mega data centre in the Patagonian region of Argentina. The announcement made no mention of whether the data centre “would create local employment, boost local industrial production, be based on environmental impact assessments, or include any Argentinian national oversight of strategic infrastructure,” says Natalia Zuazo in an article published last Friday in El Pais.

But what exactly do we mean by “extractivism”? Generally speaking, the concept of extractivism refers to an economic model that extracts value from regions thought of as “empty,” “barbaric,” or “primitive” and that are perceived to contain resources that are available for outsiders to exploit. Usually, this type of extraction generates next-to-no economic benefit for local communities, even if local elites enrich themselves quite significantly. Extractivism also tends to destroy natural ecosystems in its quest for revenue, create “serious social and health threats on the local populace,” and fuel local conflict between and among communities and private actors. This model is also highly dependent on international prices, leading to frequent boom and bust cycles that undermine long-term economic development. It is usually perpetuated by weak and corrupt institutions at the local, subnation, and national level and predatory, rent-seeking behaviour by local and national elites.

This definition seems to apply to the situation Argentina quite clearly, where a foreign multinational is seeking to benefit from the vast natural resources of the country without leaving much economic development behind and with few checks and balances. And the country’s government appears more interested in attracting foreign investment for its benefit and of the elites it represents than in establishing clear oversight mechanisms or in fostering sustainable local development.

In this context, WACC believes we need to take urgent action to address this issue. We believe states should work diligently to establish clear guidelines that protect natural ecosystems, set out clear national oversight mechanisms with real tools to enforce regulations, and mandate data centres to contribute to local and national development in the form of knowledge, technology, and financial benefits transfers. We also call on states to respect Indigenous rights, mainly obligations to ensure free, prior, and informed consent, when approving the constructions of data centre infrastructure.

Furthermore, and in line with “Water and energy nexus,” the July 2025 report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, WACC supports the notion that “[s]tates and international institutions should promote a moratorium on the development of data centres and provide clear information on their water and energy consumption and the risks that they pose to climate change, the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems, the human rights of impoverished populations and the survival of vulnerable productive sectors.” This moratorium should remain in place until these risks have been effectively mitigated.

WACC looks forward to being part of continued civil society pressure to ensure that the calls for a more equitable digital world eventually turn into reality. We encourage people, communities, and civil society organizations everywhere to join us in these efforts.

Image: © cnv-studio via Canva.com

Such is the case of Radio Stereo Ideal 98.9 FM, a community radio station based in Tena, in Ecuador’s Amazon region, that WACC visited recently in the context of our Voices of the Amazon project.

The Amazon rainforest is a major carbon sink, a vital source of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and a pivotal mechanism for local and global climate stability. However, multiple social and environmental challenges are contributing to degradation of the region that is bringing it to climate tipping points.

In Napo province, the area served by Radio Ideal, gold mining is one of these challenges. Its large-scale dredging of rivers, use of mercury to separate gold from sediment, and deforestation to make way for open pit mining have a devastating impact. Substances used for extraction have an adverse effect on water quality and fishing. Contamination of rivers also means they cannot be used for tourism, Napo’s main economic activity.

In the long term, this contributes to unemployment, poverty, and social tension as communities become split between those supporting gold mining and those opposing it. There are also many reports of state officials failing to uphold environmental regulations and judicial rulings against extraction due to bribes and threats from actors involved in mining, making the situation even more difficult to address.

Radio Ideal, in operation since 1993, is a central actor in holding local decision makers accountable and in helping to organize local civil society to challenge the activities that are destroying the rain forest.

The station has positioned itself as the only media outlet in Napo, an area with very limited internet connectivity, that provides a platform for local communities to express themselves. With a 600-watt transmitter, its broadcasting reaches most cities in the province, where 75 percent of the population is Indigenous, of the Kichwa nation. A quarter of the station’s programming is in the Kichwa language, and one of its two studios is owned by a local Kichwa community.

Radio Ideal’s motto? “The communities do not have to come to the radio station—the radio station must go to the communities.” Its broadcasters have been “in the trenches” covering local protests, visiting mining sites, and questioning the decisions of local officials.

It has also instated an open-door policy meaning that anyone whose vision aligns with that of the station—rooted in human rights and the protection of nature—is welcome to a space on the programming grid. This has led to multiple alliances: with Indigenous organizations, a network of community reporters, sustainable tourism leaders, environmental activists, local business owners, women’s groups, advocates for the rights of people with disabilities, and allied legislators and policy makers.

In other words, the station has contributed to a local ecosystem of support and advocacy in which it plays the role of connector, convener, and bridge builder.

This collaborative approach, with the radio station as a platform, has enabled the environmental movement in Napo to score some major wins: the suspension of an open pit mining license between 2020 and 2023, the removal of two corrupt provincial government officials from office, the appointment of members of the movement as provincial ombudsperson and their election to the national legislature.

These wins have sown the seeds of a political movement that hopes to one day convince local power to finally put an end to mining across Napo. Though mining, deforestation, and water pollution continue, the local environmental movement and the radio station have managed to articulate a different vision of development: one where people do not have to destroy their forests and rivers to meet their basic needs. And they are inviting local communities to a conversation about translating this vision to reality.

The work of this station is a good reminder that while many of the current efforts to address climate change, like energy transition and reforestation, are essential, we mustn’t ignore the role of communication, information, and media actors in turning the situation around. 

Democratic and inclusive media and information systems enable local actors to influence local policies in a positive way. They shed light on the local drivers that fuel environmental degradation. And they contribute to a social climate in which concerns for environmental issues can translate into genuine political will and meaningful action.

The solutions to climate change must be rooted in a clear understanding of local dynamics, including people’s livelihoods, local economies, and local power dynamics.

In WACC’s experience, it is impossible for locally relevant solutions to emerge without healthy and democratic local communication ecosystems that enable the most affected communities to be heard and to advance their own solutions.

Failing to pay attention to such communication issues risks condemning many of the policies currently being rolled out to failure. The work of actors such as Radio Ideal is vital not just for local communities in Tena but for all of us.

David Granja, director of Radio Ideal in Ecuador’s Amazon region. Photo: WACC

Learn about WACC’s support for grassroots organizations using communication rights to advance climate justice.

News reports informed audiences that pets and livestock needed temporarily to be kept away from the UK river Alyn due to pollution so severe that fish had died. That recurring fires were threatening biodiversity of the Bangladeshi Sundarbans, the single largest mangrove forest in the world. That the wet season was finally bringing relief to pastures and cattle in the Australian Barkly region following devastating bushfires the previous year. That in California, historic rainfall and heavy snows had caused flooding and mudslides, while in Kenya, citizens’ anger and frustration had grown due to the havoc wreaked by catastrophic flooding and inadequate government response.

These stories are part of a larger one on the triple planetary crisis of our time — the crisis of pollution, of climate, and of biodiversity loss on a world scale.

According to the digital environmental news outlet Earth.org, the biggest environmental problems in 2024 include global warming from fossil fuels, poor governance, and food waste. The focus of the 2024 World Environment Day on June 5 on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience under the slogan “Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration.” seeks to underline that time cannot be reversed but there is an opportunity to “grow forests, revive water sources, and bring back soils […to] make peace with the land.”

Good environmental reporting has never been more critical. Natural and human-induced disasters are growing in frequency and severity. Accurate, timely, and comprehensive reporting is vital to build understanding and drive actions to prevent and mitigate further damage.

It is important in order to raise awareness, inform policy, educate the public on the science, highlight solutions, and build knowledge on the connection between the local and the macro, between seemingly isolated events and global climate change.

Yet, sources indicate that environmental journalism is second only to war reporting in terms of the risks faced by its journalists, both those who work for traditional media organisations and those who practise as citizen journalists mostly from Indigenous communities.

As we mark World Environment Day, let us recognize the role of the media and journalists. Let us commit to supporting and amplifying their work to help build a more resilient and sustainable world.

Image: Shutterstock AI

Their call is to recognize the vital role that these communities, many of which hold collective rights over their territories, play in the conservation of essential ecosystems.

They hope to bring this call to the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 in the United Arab Emirates in early December.

The situation in the Gulf of Guayaquil on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast illustrates the importance of their call.

The region is prosperous yet unequal, a region dominated by the shrimp industry. The Gulf’s natural resources have been systematically extracted since at least the 18th century. This has led to the degradation of several ecosystems, particularly mangrove-covered areas — which play a central role in protecting the coast and regulating salt concentration.

These losses have primarily affected the ancestral inhabitants of this land, the Punae people, with a severe impact on their livelihoods and ways of life.

Nevertheless, as a result of years of resistance, the Punae have managed to obtain the rights to some 60,000 hectares of mangroves and are engaged in community-led ecosystem monitoring. Their struggle is guided by ancestral knowledge about the functioning of the mangrove ecosystems, rooted in the idea of interdependence.

The type of knowledge held by the Punae people is known as traditional ecological knowledge.

Traditional ecological knowledge can be essential for the adaptation to the effects of climate change.

Traditional ecological knowledge is an invaluable source of legitimacy at the local level as integrating it into climate policies can bring more sustainable interventions and can help strengthen local governance models.

And Indigenous knowledge is “an invaluable basis for developing adaptation and natural resource management strategies in response to environmental and other forms of change,” as underlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

Yet, there are still many challenges in “mainstreaming” this form of knowledge into climate policy.

One of the main hurdles in engaging with traditional ecological knowledge is the difference in what constitutes valid knowledge in Western and non-Western thought.

Western science favours analytical and reductionist methods, is positivist and materialist, is objective and mostly quantitative, is based on an academic and literate transmission, and isolates its objects of study from their vital context by putting them in simplified and controllable experimental environments.

In contrast, traditional knowledge tends to be more intuitive and holistic, has a spiritual dimension and does not always make distinctions between the empirical and the sacred, is usually mainly subjective and qualitative, is often passed on orally from one generation to the next by elders, and usually depends on its context and particular local conditions.

Another, often ignored, barrier to integrating traditional ecological knowledge into climate policy is that of communication injustice — the injustice of being denied a public voice.

Many Indigenous and grassroots communities face communication injustice on a daily basis.

The Punae people in Ecuador suffer from communication injustice in that their plight receives little or unbalanced media attention because it stands in the way of powerful shrimp business interests.

They also lack reliable internet connectivity and a dearth of independent media. This makes them nearly invisible to the broader public and to policy makers.

COP 28 will be — yet another — opportunity to raise the visibility of traditional ecological knowledge in climate circles.

Governments and civil society involved in the COP process must highlight the critical importance of local knowledge in addressing the climate crisis. And they must place communication and information justice at the heart of climate and environmental justice.

Failure to do so will perpetuate the status quo, meaning local voices will continue to be ignored.

A member of the Indigenous Peoples Constituency at COP26 advocates for bolder action to address climate change.
Photo: Albin Hillert/Life on Earth

These activities are pushing deforestation levels towards 20%, a point of no return beyond which the rainforest will be unable to regenerate.

An estimated 123 billion tons of carbon are stored in the Amazon.Halting deforestation across the Amazon basin is critical in the fight against climate change.

Real political action needed

In early August, heads of state from the nine countries of the Amazon rainforest gathered in Belem, Brazil, to discuss ways to stop deforestation in the region. Despite several speeches filled with good intentions, participating countries were unable to agree to a clear target to limit deforestation.

The main reason for this failure? Some countries are calling for strict and urgent measures to address the issue — halting all oil exploration in the region and creating a joint military force to take on deforestation head-on. But other countries are still open to continued extraction and infrastructure development.  

In response, civil society representatives called for government leaders to take real action in the form of financing, measurable targets, and sanctions, and to address the root causes of deforestation.

However, the summit declaration does highlight several important issues:

• the importance of working shoulder to shoulder with Indigenous people
• a call for developed countries to meet their development and climate financing commitments
• plans for cooperation with nations that are home to other critical forest ecosystems, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia

This shows that despite challenges, there is political will to address the issue and that progress is possible. This summit would have been unthinkable under the leadership of far-right Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.

Creating space for local voices

As countries develop policies to address reforestation, WACC calls on governments and civil society working to protect the Amazon rainforest to create real opportunities for the voices and concerns of local people living across the Amazon — including Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant communities — to be heard and taken seriously.

As we have expressed before, local knowledge and participation are essential in guaranteeing the legitimacy and sustainability of efforts seeking to protect this vital ecosystem. But meaningful local participation in policy conversations is impossible unless structural communication and deficits are addressed.

Supporting grassroots communication efforts

Access to communication in the Amazon is marked by a number of factors — great distances, weather conditions that affect the operation of electronic devices, a dearth of public interest media, the centrality of rivers as communication routes and of radio as the main medium of communication, insufficient infrastructure and internet connectivity.

As a result, local communities in the region face a myriad of barriers in using media and communication to advance their environmental agendas. These include limited access to communication platforms, under- and misrepresentation in mainstream media, low levels of media literacy, and restricted access to information.

Therefore, supporting existing grassroots communication and information efforts in the region is key.

Many communities have already taken media — especially community media and social media — into their own hands. They are:

• developing their own narratives
• organizing advocacy campaigns
• proposing development paradigms based on Indigenous knowledge
• addressing local information gaps

These initiatives need broad support to enable broad and transformative local communication.

Project: Voices of the Amazon

WACC continues to back efforts by local and regional partners to protect the Amazon region. Earlier this year, we launched the multi-year initiative “Voices of the Amazon” to strengthen the community radio movement in the region. 

We call on other organizations to join us in the effort to provide new platforms for local communities to be heard in public debates around climate policy.

Devastation in Brazil’s northern Para State, where the Amazon jungle has been cut down and burned in order to raise cattle.
Photo: Life On Earth/Paul Jeffrey

Given the current trajectory of emissions and lack of meaningful climate action, the world is on the way to 3 to 4^oC of warming by 2100. As a result, whole regions of Africa, Australia, the United States, South America, and Asia are likely to be made uninhabitable by direct heat, desertification, and flooding.

Low-income communities in the Global South, including Indigenous peoples, family farmers, the urban poor, and vulnerable communities are being far more affected by climate change than people living in higher latitudes and wealthier countries. COP27 should be paying particular and urgent attention to this dimension of the problem.

As climate change intensifies, many people North and South will be forced to move as they become exposed to rising sea levels, extreme drought or extreme rainfall exacerbating to an unprecedented degree current levels of international migration.

Fortunately, many of the communities most impacted by the effects of climate change are also prime movers in environmental and climate justice movements. However, their voices, knowledge, and ideas are rarely heard in the media.

These communities are also absent from most climate policy conversations partly due to lack of access to information and platforms to express their views. As a result, for the most part people at the forefront of the climate crisis do not have real opportunities to help shape policy responses at national and international negotiations.

These issues reflect other economic, institutional, and political barriers that impede meaningful participation by impoverished people, Indigenous, rural, and marginalized communities, including vulnerable women and girls, in society

In this context, the promotion of communication rights, which in essence consists of the democratization of media, communication, and information systems around the world, becomes essential to dealing with climate justice. Today, access to affordable digital platforms is a crucial ingredient of this mix.

Unless the people leading the fight against the climate crisis on the ground, are able to have their stories heard and seen by the broader public, and unless they have the necessary communication tools and skills to organize, it will be very difficult to generate the political will at the national and international level that will result in swift action to tackle this crisis.

COP27’s final text setting out directions, obligations, resolutions, and a programme of work is unlikely to include any mention of the role of communications. Yet, it remains vital to determining and implementing viable solutions.

Photo: Simon Chambers/ACT Alliance

The need for critical climate change communication, by the news media especially – the authoritative information source for the general public – cannot be overstated. NASA’s climate scientists tell us that the planet’s average surface temperature has risen largely due to carbon emissions in the atmosphere and other human activities. This heat has been absorbed by the ocean, ice sheets are melting, glaciers are retreating, sea levels rising, ocean waters acidifying, and extreme climate events are increasing. Various sources underline the disproportionate impact of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable, especially women (IUCN issues brief, UNFCC, UN Chronicle).

Critical climate change communication educates, informs, persuades, and mobilizes action by covering not just the official story and the messages of power holders, it breaks down the scientific evidence for a lay audience and also brings in the opinions of those most affected, global south communities, the poorest and women primarily.

The COP26 moment brought some exemplary journalistic articles shared on Twitter.

The Paris Agreement of 2015 bound countries to take action to keep global warming below 2C in order to prevent a climate catastrophe. The 2021 summit aimed to secure global net-zero by mid-century and keep 1.5C within reach, to secure finance, and to finalize the rules that make the Paris Agreement operational.

Whether a critical approach to climate change journalism will become the rule during the Glasgow Agreement (draft: https://bit.ly/3onlLej) implementation period up until the next summit remains to be seen.

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Related posts
https://waccglobal.org/biased-media-cloud-climate-change/

Photo: Mauro Ujetto/Shutterstock

As the effects of climate change accelerate, we must remember that they will not be felt equally across the world. Low-income communities in the South, such as Indigenous peoples, family farmers, the urban poor, rural women are expected to be far more affected by climate change than people living in higher latitudes in wealthier countries despite having played almost no role in contributing to it. This is because of changing agricultural zones, precipitation patterns, and strain on poor urban infrastructure, among other factors.

Yet, many of the communities in the South most impacted by the effects of climate change are at the forefront of environmental and climate struggles.¹ We might even argue that local struggles to halt extractive projects, such as the construction of new oil and gas infrastructure, often led by Indigenous and rural communities, may just represent our best hope to stop emissions in light of the ongoing failure of governments and corporations to do so.

Unfortunately, we barely hear their voices and concerns in the media. Indigenous communities and grassroots leaders at the forefront of the fight against the climate crisis are struggling to make their voices heard in political and media spheres. Indigenous people might get media attention for their clothes, culture, or spirituality but rarely for their political actions, which increasingly take the form of calls for climate justice.² On the contrary, corporate media often presents Indigenous people as “living in the past and enjoying underserved special rights”³ and colonial stereotypes are rampant. These issues are symptomatic of the many economic, institutional, and political barriers that impede the meaningful participation of Indigenous, rural, and marginalized communities in society.

In this context, the promotion of communication rights, which in essence consists of calling for the democratization of media, communication, and information systems around the world, becomes essential to dealing with climate justice. Unless the people leading the fight against the climate crisis on the ground, such as Indigenous and other vulnerable communities, are able to have their stories heard and seen by the broader public, it will be very difficult to generate the political will at the national and international level to take immediate action to tackle this crisis.

Communication rights and climate justice activists should work together to advance actions such as building connections between grassroots climate activists and media houses; promoting greater access to media, the Internet, and ICTs among Indigenous and marginalized communities; calling for the allocation of broadcasting licenses to community-based groups; and building the capacity of Indigenous and other grassroots communities to engage with media.

For the majority of people, information about climate change and how to deal with it comes from media and news sources. The media have the power to “steer” political debate and policy decisions⁴ and as such, media activism in favour of climate justice should be seen as a major element of the struggle to tackle the crisis.

1. Meynen, Nick. Frontlines: Stories of Global Environmental Justice. Zero Books, 2020.
2. Roosvall, Anna, and Matthew Tegelberg. Media and Transnational Climate Justice. Bern, Switzerland, Peter Lang, 2018.
3. Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2015.
4. Roosvall, Anna, and Matthew Tegelberg. Media and Transnational Climate Justice. Bern, Switzerland, Peter Lang, 2018.

Photo: https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/social/indigenous-media-zone-1st.html