(United Nations) Increasingly concerned about the devastating impacts of climate change coming to their doorstep, 80 percent of people around the world want stronger climate commitments from their governments, according to a global poll released Thursday.
In the eight-month survey by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the University of Oxford and polling firm GeoPoll, 15 questions were asked through random telephone calls to more than 75 000 people, in 87 languages, and in 77 countries which represent 87% of the world’s population.
The call is particularly clear in the poorest countries (89%), but remains high also in the G20 countries (76%) and in the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China (73%) and the United States (66%).
As countries signatories to the Paris Agreement must submit new targets for reducing CO2 emissions by early 2025, “these results prove beyond doubt that people around the world are in favor of bold climate action,” he said. commented Cassie Flynn, UNDP climate manager.
In 62 of the 77 countries, a majority of respondents particularly want a “rapid” exit from fossil fuels, including in China (80%) or the United States (54%), but not in Russia (16%).
Support for action encouraged by fear.
Thus, 56% of respondents say they think about warming regularly, at least every week, or even daily. A higher percentage among women (57%) than among men (55%), and among those over 60 (59%) who now seem to have caught up with younger people in awareness of the climate crisis.
More than half of respondents (53%) also say they are “more worried than last year” about warming, while 15% say they are less worried.
Leading this rising climate anxiety are Fiji (80% more worried), Afghanistan (78%), Mexico and Turkey (77%). On the other side, Saudi Arabia (25% more worried), Russia (34%), Czech Republic (36%) and China (39%).
Even if this does not necessarily translate into reality.
Evoking the contradictions between concerns on the one hand, and electoral or consumer choices on the other, the head of the UNDP, Achim Steiner, underlines the concept of “erroneous perception”: “I would happily do more, but others do not don’t do it, so I don’t do anything.”
