Climate  change  in  developing  countries:  Africa

Miguel  Sanchez  Gomez  

Key  points  of  Africa  Talks  Climate

Awareness  of  changes  in  “weather”  pa:erns  

Recogni<on  of  human’s  role  

Impacts  in  people’s  daily  lives  

Incorrect  concepts  

No  recogni<on  of  global  causes  (general  public)  

“Governments  must  step  in”  

Terminology  and  transla<on  

Low  understanding  among  leaders  

Predictors  of  public  climate  

change  awareness  

and  risk  percep>on

•  Educa<on  •  Personal  experiences  •  Socio-­‐cultural  variables  •  Psychological  variables  •  Socio-­‐demographics  •  Physical  and  financial  well-­‐being  •  Beliefs  •  Opinions  on  related  issues  (e.g.  air  and  water  quality)  •  Communica<on  

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2728 ARTICLES

100 m50 m

100 m50 m

Less than 30%30−39%40−49%50−75%More than 75%

Aware of climate change

Of the ‘Aware’: climate change is a serious threat

a

b

50−69%70−79%80−89%

Less than 50%

More than 90%

Figure 1 | Geographic patterns of global climate change perceptions opinion poll. Geographic patterns of natnal climate change perceptions opinion poll in2007–2008 worldwide (N= 119) on the percentage of awareness (a) and risk perception (b). Data is weighted and collected by Gallup on the basis of twoquestions: How much do you know about global warming or climate change? And for those who are aware, they were further asked: How serious of a threatis global warming to you and your family? Left, Original responses were recategorized into binary level and as a percentage for each nation. For clarity, thelevel of awareness and seriousness are shown in five colour classes. Areas in light grey represent countries with no data. Right, Perception patterns withrespect to adult (15 years and older) population sizes, using the same colour classification. Bubble size for each country is proportional to adult populationsize, where large values indicate large populations. The location of each bubble approximates the spatial relationships among the countries.

climate change awareness and risk perception among individualsin each nation. These variables include socio-demographics(for example, gender, age, religion, education and location)13,17,physical18 and financial19 well-being, beliefs related to climatechange (for example, the primary cause of climate change)8,20,communication (media) access, behaviours (for example, pro-environmental and civic engagement)21, and opinions on relatedissues (for example, satisfaction with local air and water quality)22(see Methods for details).

On the basis of previous findings, we hypothesize that educationlevel will be the most important (that is, top-ranked) predictor ofclimate change awareness, while understanding that global warmingis human-caused will be the most significant predictor of perceivedrisk8,20. With the rapid spread of communication devices andchannels globally, we also expect awareness of climate change tobe greater among individuals who score higher on an index ofcommunication access. Because the perception of local temperaturechanges seems to be relatively accurate worldwide23 and experienceswith local temperature can influence climate change belief24,25, wehypothesize that the perception of recent local temperature changewill predict risk perception. Further, we hypothesize that gender,age and location will also predict risk perceptions13,26. We also testfor a relationship between religion and risk perceptions, as hasbeen observed with environmental concern more broadly17. Somemembers of the public in the United States interpret climate changeusing a mental model of air pollution22, so we investigate whetherperceptions of local air and water quality predict climate changeawareness and risk perceptions.

Members of the American public who hold pro-environmentalviews, demonstrate high involvement with environmental policyissues, and show active civic participation are particularlyconcerned about climate change and the environment21,27. Thus,we hypothesize that, globally, members of the public that report

more pro-environmental behaviours, who express dissatisfactionwith preservation e�orts by the government, and who indicatehigh levels of civic engagement will be more likely to be aware ofand concerned about climate change. Finally, many studies suggestthat climate change will have large negative impacts on humanwell-being18, but few have considered how an individual’s currentstate of well-being influences climate change risk perceptions (forexample, e�ects of economic recession and health19,28). For example,people with low incomes and poor health may be more likely to beaware of and perceive climate change as a threat than individualswith high incomes and better health. As such, we hypothesize thatcurrent household income, financial well-being and physical healthmay a�ect climate change awareness and risk perceptions.

Diverse global public opinions of climate changeSimilar to previous multinational public opinion polls1–3, this studyfinds that climate change awareness and risk perception wereunevenly distributed around the world in 2007–2008 (Fig. 1).The highest levels of awareness (over 90%) were reported in thedeveloped world, including North America, Europe and Japan(Fig. 1a). By contrast, majorities in developing countries fromAfricato the Middle East and Asia reported that they had never heardof climate change, including more than 65% of respondents incountries such as Egypt, Bangladesh, Nigeria and India. Amongthose respondents who had heard of climate change, however, thosein developing countries generally perceived climate change as amuch greater threat to themselves and their own family than didrespondents in developed countries (Fig. 1b).

National, cultural and geographic factors play an important rolein shaping individual-level perceptions of climate change1,2,22, thusit is important to identify the key individual-level predictors ofclimate change awareness and risk perception for each countryseparately. In high-dimensional stratified data such as the Gallup

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 5 | NOVEMBER 2015 | www.nature.com/natureclimatechange 1015

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Extracted  from  (Lee,  Markowitz,  Howe,  Ko  &  Leiserowitz,  2015)  

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2728 ARTICLES

0

20

AF AS EU∗ LAC

Communications accessEducation

Others

Cause global warmingLocal temp. perceptionOthers

0

10

a Climate change awareness

b Risk perception

AF AS EU∗ LAC

Figure 3 | Top-ranked predictors of climate change perceptions worldwide. Top-ranked predictor of climate change awareness (a) and risk perception (b).The maps show results from the random forest classification tree and variable importance evaluation for 119 nations. The three predictors with the highestfrequencies are illustrated for a subset of nations, where the most frequent predictors are available for importance evaluation, across four geographicregions (bar plot insets; awareness N=97 countries and risk N=67; abbreviations in Fig. 4). The ‘Others’ category indicates all other predictors. Hashedlines indicate countries with a ratio of �1.5 (an arbitrary threshold) between top two predictors during the variable ranking evaluation. A larger ratioindicates the top-ranked predictor as more influential (see ratio classes in Supplementary Fig. 3). The three top-ranked predictors for each nation areavailable in Supplementary Figs 4–6 and Supplementary Dataset 1. AF, Africa; AS, Asia; EU⇤, Europe, North America and Australia; LAC, Latin Americaand Caribbean.

available on the role of political ideology for a global comparison34,including this data set, so it is unclear whether liberal versusconservative ideologies are relevant predictors in most of the othercountries of the world.

By comparison, this analysis finds that the strongest predictorsof Chinese climate change risk perceptions are the belief that globalwarming is human-caused (similar to the USA) and dissatisfactionwith local air quality (di�erent than theUSA; third rightmost node).Chinese who think that climate change is natural and are satisfiedwith water quality in their area (second leftmost node) perceiveclimate change as a low or non-existent risk (Fig. 2b(ii)). Thecorrelation of perceived poor local air andwater quality with climatechange risk perceptions is probably due to widespread experiencewith poor air and water quality, particularly in the urban areasin China35. As found in other countries, many Chinese may beincorrectly applying amental model of local pollution to the issue ofclimate change36. The role of intense local pollution in shaping theChinese (and other) publics’ understanding of and concern aboutclimate change warrants further investigation. These results alsoindicate that the key predictors of climate change awareness and riskperceptions can be very di�erent across countries.

Worldwide, education level (62% or 70 countries;N =113 owingto missing data) and beliefs about the cause of climate change (48%or 57 countries;N =119) were frequently the top-ranked predictorsof climate change awareness and risk perceptions, respectively(in red; Fig. 3; also see Supplementary Figs 3–6). To assess therelative importance of the top predictor across the countries, wecompute the ratio between the two top-ranked variables. We find

that over 60% (N = 70) and over 80% (N =57) have educationand beliefs about the cause of climate change, respectively, as veryinfluential top-ranked predictors (ratio �1.5; larger ratio indicatesmore influence; Fig. 3 and Supplementary Fig. 3). The frequenciesof the predictors across the regions were not significantly di�erent(awareness: � 2 =9.52, p=0.15; risk: � 2 =11.0, p=0.09). Althoughthis result supports our hypotheses8,14,20, a significant proportionof nations had a di�erent top-ranked predictor (SupplementaryFig. 4). For example, perception of local temperature change isthe strongest predictor of risk perceptions in many Asian (forexample, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam) and African countries(for example, Madagascar, Mozambique and Rwanda). This findingis particularly important because previous research has foundthat many individuals around the world have accurately detectedrecent changes in local temperature anomalies23, with researchalso suggesting that perceived local warming can influence riskperceptions24,25. Together, the results suggest that as societiesbecome more educated (particularly in the developing world) andas more people begin to experience more pronounced and atypicalchanges in local weather patterns, awareness of climate changeand perceptions of climate change as a serious threat are likelyto increase worldwide. Thus, investing in primary and secondaryeducation may be an e�ective tool to increase awareness and riskperceptions of climate change. In addition, the learning of newknowledge and skills to reduce vulnerabilities and manage climatechange risks also has the benefit of helping to achieve globalsustainable development goals37,38. It is important to note, however,that education can interact with political ideology in predicting risk

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 5 | NOVEMBER 2015 | www.nature.com/natureclimatechange 1017

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Extracted  from  (Lee,  Markowitz,  Howe,  Ko  &  Leiserowitz,  2015)  

Conclusions  of  study

Primary  and  secondary  educa<on  are  the  most  effec<ve  tools  to  increase  climate  change  awareness  and  risk  percep<on  

Na<onal  indicators  of  sustainability  (e.g.  GDP)  are  poor  indicators  of  the  correla<ve  structure  of  climate  change  risk  percep<on  and  awareness  

Group  1  •  Jordan  S.  •  Taylor  C.  •  Luke  W.  • Maxwell  B.  •  Leina  H.  •  Jacob  F.  •  Jordan  K.  •  Aishi  O.  

Group  2  •  Pascal  S.  •  Luke  C.  •  Paula  VC  •  Chandler  G.  •  Henry  A.  •  Haley  H.  •  Brody  J.  • Michaela  S.  

Judges  • Kyle  L.  •  Sophia  M.  •  Jeremy  P.  

Discussion:  How  can  we  take  ac>on  against  climate  change  in  developing  countries  such  as  those  in  Africa?

Increase  educa<on:  government  leaders,  urban  areas,  rural  areas,  or  the  media  

Educate  the  why  and  how  of  climate  change  or  prac<cal  ways  of  coping  with  it  

Start  implemen<ng  adapta<on  and  mi<ga<on  alterna<ves  (shorter  <me  frame)  

Mi<ga<on  or  adapta<on  (South  Africa)  Na<onal  governments,  developed  countries  or  suprana<onal  level  

References

               Burton,  M.,  Cooke,  S.,  Godfrey,  A.,  Neville,  L.,  Pauker,  E.,  &  le  Roux-­‐Rutledge,  E.  (2010).  The  public  understanding  of  climate  change  in  ten  countries.  London,  UK:  BBC  World  Service  Trust.  Retrieved  from  h:ps://www.gov.uk/dfid-­‐research-­‐outputs/africa-­‐talks-­‐climate-­‐the-­‐public-­‐understanding-­‐of-­‐climate-­‐change-­‐in-­‐ten-­‐countries-­‐execu<ve-­‐summary                  Lee,  T.,  Markowitz,  E.,  Howe,  P.,  Ko,  C.,  &  Leiserowitz,  A.  (2015).  Predictors  of  public  climate  change  awareness  and  risk  percep<on  around  the  world.  Nature  Climate  Change,  5(11),  1014-­‐1020.  doi:  10.1038/nclimate2728