Fact Check-Daughter of WEF leader didn’t call for ‘permanent climate lockdowns’ in 2020 clip

There is no evidence Nicole Schwab, World Economic Forum (WEF) leader Klaus Schwab’s daughter, publicly called for “permanent climate lockdowns.” Yet, posts on social media link to a headline that says: “Klaus Schwab’s Daughter: ‘Permanent Climate Lockdowns Coming – Whether You Like It or Not.’”

It stems from an article published by ‘The People’s Voice’ website on July 30 (here).

Examples of social media posts sharing its headline online can be seen (here) and (here).

Reuters did not find any credible reports that Nicole Schwab made a call for “permanent climate lockdowns” (archive.is/wip/dm6il), and a spokesperson for the WEF said to Reuters that she made no such remark.

The article itself and the evidence it includes also do not show Schwab proposing permanent climate lockdowns.

The article includes a 50-second snippet of a two-minute video uploaded by sustainable development group InTent in June 2020, where she spoke about how the pandemic provided a “tremendous opportunity” to have a “Great Reset” (here).

Nowhere in the video does Schwab call for “permanent climate lockdowns” whether people “like it or not.”

In the clip, Schwab spoke about how the pandemic showed that “things can shift very rapidly when we put our minds to it and when we feel the immediate emergency to our livelihoods,” adding that, “the system […] that we had before is not sustainable.”

“So, I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really, to have this Great Reset and to use these huge flows of money, to use the increased leverage that policymakers have today in a way that was not possible before. To create a change that is not incremental but that we can look back and we can say, this is the moment that we really started to position nature at the core of the economy,” she states in the video cited by the author.

The Great Reset was set of proposals put forward by the WEF in June 2020 and a book later published by Klaus Schwab that encouraged significant change post pandemic, including implementing initiatives to counter unemployment, push forward changes to fiscal policy and provide funding to sustainable infrastructure projects (here).

Since its launch in 2020, the Great Reset has become a theme in conspiracy theory claims shared online (here), with many addressed by Reuters (here), (here).

Further in the article, the author cites an article penned by Kunal Kumar, a member of the Indian Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, as proof that the WEF has been “pushing the idea of “climate lockdowns” since Covid first emerged.”

The article, an opinion piece published by the WEF in September 2022 (here), discusses the concept of “personal carbon allowance programmes,” or PCAs, to curb emissions.

Kumar argues that recent developments like the social responsibility that was exhibited during the pandemic could provide a path for initiatives like PCAs. The article does not call for a “permanent climate lockdown,” however.

More broadly, the use of PCAs is a proposal where adults would have equal carbon allowances aligned with national and international targets, with the overall hope of lowering people’s per capita carbon footprint, including travel.

More on PCAs and why the idea has been met with resistance can be found (here), (here).

Spokespeople for InTent and The People’s Voice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

VERDICT

Misleading. The video linked in the article does not feature Nicole Schwab making a call for permanent climate lockdowns. The article links to an opinion piece not written by Schwab hosted on the WEF website that mentions personal carbon allowance programs, an idea that would place personal targets on people’s emissions, including travel.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work (here).