Over 80% of people across the globe want their government to take “stronger” action to combat climate change, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) survey.
The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 was completed by 75,000 people across 77 countries and the survey consisted of 15 questions on the topic of climate change.
The aim of the survey was to understand how climate change is impacting people across the world, and how the people want their government to respond.
UNDP administrator, Achim Steiner said that the vote is “loud and clear”, and that global citizens want their government to act now and “act boldly” to fight climate crisis.
Some of the world’s “biggest” greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, such as, China and Iran, were in favour of stronger government support against climate change.
The survey discovered that women from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the US were more likely to want more climate action from the government compared to men.
After a year of adverse weather conditions globally, 53% of the participants were more worried about climate change this year, than last year.
The analysis revealed that the people who experienced “worse than usual extreme” weather have thought about climate change weekly and many have factored it into big decisions.
Citizens from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were more worried about the impact of climate change compared to people from other countries who took part in the survey.
Prof. Stephen Fisher from the Department of Sociology at University of Oxford, said:
“Special efforts were also made to include people from marginalised groups in the poorest parts of the world. This is some of the very highest quality global data on public opinions on climate change available.”
A “huge majority” of people in the most climate-vulnerable/dependent countries wanted more protection from their government against extreme weather, according to the survey results.
The change in weather has impacted 69% of peoples’ decision on where to live or work with the main proportion of those affected in the LDCs.
Nine out of 10 countries (85%) wanted their country to move away from fossil fuels in the hope that the country could transition to clean energy “very quickly”.
Even people among the top 10 biggest producers of fossil fuels, such as, oil, gas or coal were in favour of moving away from using non-renewable sources.
Global director of climate change at the UNDP, Cassie Flynn said that these results are “undeniable evidence that people everywhere support climate action” and the next two years are important to ensure global warming stays under 1.5°C.