Climate change concern falls around the world even as situation worsens, study shows

Fewer than half surveyed in a global questionnaire believe that it poses 'a very serious threat'

Activists block a motorway in Rome. Italy, to highlight the need to combat the climate crisis, on Monday, October 17, 2022. Reuters

Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, a survey shows, with fewer than half of those questioned saying they believed it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries in the next 20 years.

Only 20 per cent of people in China, the world's biggest polluter, said they believed that climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the previous poll in 2019, the survey by Gallup World Risk Poll showed on Wednesday.

Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7 per cent in 2021, it said.

The Covid-19 pandemic and concerns about more immediate issues such as health and livelihoods may partly explain the drop, the survey, based on more than 125,000 interviews in 121 countries, showed.

Climate change awareness rose slightly in the US in 2021, the second biggest global polluter, to 51.5 per cent, it said.

Regions with the highest ecological threats are on average the least concerned about climate change, with only 27.4 per cent of the Middle East and North Africa and 39.1 per cent of South Asian respondents concerned about the risks.

The findings come before the next round of global climate talks when countries meet in Egypt in November for Cop27.

But despite the shrinking concern, the ecological bill of climate change is growing globally.

A study by the Institute for Economics and Peace of 228 countries and territories found that 750 million people globally are now affected by undernourishment and climate change, as well as rising inflation.

Furthermore, Russia's war in Ukraine is expected to exacerbate food insecurity in the future.

More than 1.4 billion people in 83 countries face extreme “water stress”, where more than a fifth of the population does not have access to clean drinking water, the study showed.

Several European countries are expected to experience critical clean water shortages by 2040, including Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal, the report found, which will also hit most of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.

Annually, air pollution has cost the world $8.1 trillion, or 6.1 per cent of the global gross domestic product, causing between six to nine million deaths, the study showed.

The average global cost of natural disasters reached $200 billion annually, four times higher than in the 1980s, it said.

“Negotiators at Cop27 need to consider the ways in which climate change is exacerbating the impacts of ecological threats … and how the international community can mitigate them,” said Steve Killelea, founder of the Sydney-based institute.