Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows: study – The Peninsula

Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows: study – The Peninsula

Berlin: Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, a survey shows, with fewer than half those questioned believing it posed a "very serious threat" to their countries in the next 20 years.

Only 20% 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% 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 over 125,000 interviews in 121 countries, showed.

Climate change awareness rose slightly in the United States in 2021, the second biggest global polluter, to 51.5%, it added.

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

The findings come ahead of 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