Hashtags denying climate change see a significant increase on Gulf social media during worldwide environmental events
05.08.2025 19:10
Driven by accounts based in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, the climate change denial and disinformation campaign seeks to manufacture false public sentiment and push climate denial hashtags to the top of Arabic-language trending topics, efforts which have been reposted and echoed by former officials.
In a sophisticated online campaign to discredit climate science, social media accounts primarily linked to users in oil-rich Gulf countries have been actively promoting climate change denial and downplaying the environmental impact of fossil fuels according to a new investigation.
The probe, conducted by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and Code for Africa, found that thousands of accounts on X —many originating in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq —engaged in an orchestrated effort to elevate Arabic-language hashtags that frame climate change as a hoax. The researchers uncovered patterns of coordinated amplification using both bot accounts and semi-automated accounts.
Three hashtags in particular dominated the discourse: #خدعة_التغير_المناخي (“#climate_change_hoax”), #كذبة_المناخ (“#climate_lie”), and # أجندة_2030 (“2030_agenda). These slogans were pushed not through organic debate, but through apparent manipulation. Less than six percent of posts were original; the vast majority were reposts as well as some quotes and replies—a strategy known to inflate visibility and give a misleading impression of broad public support.
Activity on these hashtags spiked at key moments tied to global environmental events. Post volumes surged from late May to mid-June 2024 coinciding with the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which took place from June 3-13, as well as World Environment Day on June 5. Kuwait led the campaign, contributing nearly 1,700 posts and generating over 5.2 million views, followed by Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Analysis of the engagement revealed characteristics typical of coordinated propaganda operations. Many accounts lacked geolocation data and were posted in lockstep, with one account called “@1Kuwty,” operating under the alias “STOP Age.2030”—acting as a central node. Twenty accounts repeatedly reposted content from this source, some of it identical, suggesting automation.
What’s more, some individuals involved in spreading these messages had ties to government institutions in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, contradicting the official climate policies of the two countries, both of which are signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which governments committed to strengthen the global response to climate change.
In Kuwait, former MP Shuaib Al-Muwaizri reposted material from the “STOP Age. 2030” account, which also promotes conspiracy theories opposing the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In Saudi Arabia, the disinformation was amplified by Mohammed Al-Sabban, a former senior advisor to the ministry of petroleum and mineral resources and the country’s lead negotiator at UN climate summits. Al-Sabban has publicly disputed the scientific consensus that human activity drives climate change.
“Climate change is a natural cycle that has nothing to do with human activity, contrary to what is being portrayed by the West for economic purposes, that the cause of the new climate cycle is fossil fuels, and they isolate oil in particular,” Al-Sabban posted on April 29, 2023. “And there are still people who believe their claim, because some scientists cooked it up and made huge sums of money!!!?”
His remarks echo one of the most persistent and widely debunked climate myths: that global warming is not human-induced. The United Nations affirm that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of the planet’s warming trend.
“Burning fossil fuels creates a blanket of pollution trapping the sun’s heat on Earth and raising global temperatures,” the UN states in its fact sheet on climate myths.
