The depletion of natural resources has emerged as the dominant environmental concern among citizens of the global North, according to the latest wave of GlobeScan’s tracking survey of world environmental concerns, rating ahead of issues such as climate change and water shortages.
Environmental concern has been on a long-term upward trajectory, with majorities of the global public in countries tracked by GlobeScan rating a range of environmental challenges as “very serious,” despite a falling back of concern, particularly about the climate, in 2009.
The map above illustrates the degree to which regional dynamics and economic circumstances influence the perceived severity of environmental issues around the world. Water shortages are the dominant public concern in sub-Saharan Africa, air pollution and species loss in Latin America, and automobile emissions in rapidly urbanizing China. Climate change remains a second-tier environmental concern in most nations.
The continued pre-eminence of natural resource depletion, relative to other environmental challenges, as a concern in three key economies of the global North —the UK, the USA, and Germany—may reflect a convergence of environmental concern with economic worries, particularly about the possible impact of energy shortages in the future.
It also highlights the need for those seeking to raise public awareness of environmental issues to demonstrate the link between environmental degradation and people’s own quality of life.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
Support for the free market as the best available economic system has slipped markedly in the UK over the past two years. This mirrors the sharp decline in support for free market economics recorded in the US last year—although it has since recovered a little there—and comes at a time when Occupy protestors have been camped in the City challenging the practices of the financial sector.
Nonetheless, it is still striking that this fall in support is happening when the UK has its first right-of-center government since 1997, which has vigorously defended the role of the City in British economic life and is pressing ahead with an ambitious programme of free-market reforms and cuts to public services.
In contrast, support for the free market economic system has strengthened over the past two years in India, where the economy has rebounded robustly following the global financial crisis.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
While problems such as the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone, climate change, and unrest in the Middle East preoccupy governments around the world as 2012 begins, GlobeScan’s regular monitoring of global concern over a range of issues highlights that it is more immediate and everyday problems that are often at the forefront of citizens’ minds.
In GlobeScan’s annual tracking research, corruption once again emerges as one of the global problems considered to be most serious. It is also the problem that citizens are most likely to cite when asked which global problems they have discussed with their friends and family over the past month.
As this map shows, corruption tops the list of “most talked about” problems in a range of developing and emerging economies, including Peru in South America, Ghana and Egypt in Africa, Turkey in Europe, and India and Indonesia in Asia. Corruption is also often cited as a barrier to getting to grips with many of the other global problems that, as GlobeScan’s tracking shows, preoccupy many global citizens.
Taking a strong and public stand against corruption will be an important element in what businesses need to do to demonstrate their relevance to citizens’ lives, help build public trust, and maintain their social licence to operate.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
At the end of 2011, the external environment for business has rarely been more challenging. With the Eurozone crisis unresolved, the economic headwinds that have been afflicting most of the world’s industrialised economies continue to blow – and recent data on Brazil’s economy in the last quarter suggest they may be spreading to the BRIC economies that until now have been enjoying buoyant economic growth. At the same time, pressure to regulate to ensure environmental and social responsibility is on the rise.
GlobeScan’s tracking of public respect for business across a number of sectors illustrates that at a time when consumers have little to spend and jobs are scarce, businesses are finding it hard to retain public esteem. In nine of the twelve sectors that GlobeScan tracks, respect has fallen across twelve developed and developing economies, with falls particularly sharp for food (with prices on the rise), banking (suffering from diminished consumer trust since the bailouts in 2008) and oil (thanks to a combination of high prices and environmental impact worries).
To regain consumer respect, these sectors will need to show in 2012 that they are able to deliver affordable products and services in tough economic times, while keeping one step ahead of consumer expectations on social and environmental responsibility.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
As the Durban UN summit struggles to reach an agreement that will keep climate change within acceptable limits over the next decades, GlobeScan tracking reveals that the public in much of the world is losing faith that there will be a technological solution to the problems posed by a changing climate.
The optimism that developing nations, in particular, felt that the same technological innovation that was helping to drive strong economic growth in their countries would also solve climate change with minimal changes to human behavior, appears to have waned significantly, with major falls in confidence in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Kenya, and Pakistan.
These falls are mirrored in developed economies such as the UK, USA, and Spain, which were already more pessimistic that painful lifestyle adjustments could be averted in tackling climate change. If well-founded, this pessimism only underlines how critical it is that governments achieve a strong emissions-reduction agreement in Durban.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
There has been a marked decline in people’s sense of global citizenship in the last two years in three of the world’s major economies—China, the UK, and the USA.
While GlobeScan’s latest findings indicate that a sense of global citizenship is on the rise in many emerging economies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the ongoing economic malaise affecting the G7, the lack of progress on a new global free trade agreement, and the rekindling of doubts about the future viability of the global free market system may be among the factors that are depressing citizens’ sense of belonging to the global community in these three countries. In the UK, this year’s drop represents the continuation of a decline that started in 2007.
Nevertheless, the proportion of Chinese who see themselves as global citizens remains the highest of any country polled—62%. For a country that has spent much of its history seeking to isolate itself from the rest of the world, this is a striking turnaround.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
GlobeScan’s tracking survey reveals that public concern about climate change has been volatile since the 2009 Copenhagen summit’s failure to agree to a global deal to reduce carbon emissions—but concern continues to be higher in developing than in developed countries.
This reflects our 2010 Greendex survey of 17 countries, where British, Swedish, German, and American respondents showed the lowest levels of agreement with the proposition “global warming will worsen my way of life within my own lifetime,” while Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese respondents showed high levels of agreement. This may reflect the greater potential for catastrophic events such as natural disasters to impact people’s lives in developing nations.
This decline in concern about climate change may result from increasing feelings of urgency about other social and economic issues overshadowing long-term concerns about the environment. In 2011, corruption, extreme poverty, the rising cost of food and energy, and terrorism emerge as greater preoccupations on a global level than climate change.
Particular factors that are likely to be behind the decline in the perceived seriousness of climate change in developed countries between 2000 and 2003—and again in 2010—are the impact of the September 11 attacks, the subsequent conflicts in the Middle East, and the global economic downturn. The widely publicized “Climategate” controversy is also likely to have been a factor.
France, Japan, and the USA have seen continuing decreases in the perceived seriousness of climate change over the past three years. Under the influence of the ongoing economic slowdown—and of the Fukushima disaster—climate change has lost attention in some major economies, and is slow to regain it.
Over the past year, however, climate change has recovered its position as an issue of serious concern in some developed and developing countries, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Turkey, and Russia.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
Sustainability experts strongly believe that companies have a duty to practice “choice editing” for consumers, the lastest GlobeScan/SustainAbility tracking reveals.
GlobeScan and SustainAbility regularly poll a panel of experts in sustainability issues across businesses, NGOs, government, and academia on emerging trends in sustainability. The panel was polled during September about their perspective on sustainable consumption, and the results reveal that while experts feel strongly that sustainable consumption is achievable, they have doubts about the degree to which it is compatible with economic growth, and also feel that companies have a duty to hasten the transition by restricting the choices available to consumers. Nearly four in five (78%) think that businesses have a duty to offer sustainable product lines instead of, rather than as well as, unsustainable ones.
With sustainable options still associated with premium pricing in many sectors, this perspective is likely to be challenging for companies, particularly during hard economic times, but it reflects how the terms of the debate are shifting. Another challenge is that GlobeScan consumer tracking also reveals that many people are skeptical about the claims that companies make for the responsible credentials of their products, citing “greenwash” as a major barrier to adopting more responsible consumer behavior. Sustainability champions within businesses will need to address both these issues if “choice editing” is to become a reality.
Finding from The 2011 GlobeScan/SustainAbility Survey
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
In a week when the stability of the global economy was once again called into question, with European political leaders meeting to seek a solution to the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone, GlobeScan’s tracking data shows that the public in many countries remains deeply pessimistic about the future of the planet.
For over ten years, GlobeScan has been monitoring the degree to which people around the globe feel that “the world is going in the right direction.” On average, less than one-third of those polled have endorsed this view in recent years. This year’s findings show that there has been no rebound in optimism—and indeed that confidence in the way the world is heading has taken a further knock in many of the world’s major economies.
Less than a fifth (19%) of Americans now feel that the world is going in the right direction, compared to more than half back in 2001. Only 14 per cent of Japanese feel the same way. Just one in ten in Spain, one of the countries at the eye of the Eurozone storm, and fewer than a quarter of UK respondents are optimistic about the world’s direction—a figure that has fallen continually since 2006.
Optimism is markedly higher in emerging economies such as China, where 65% think the world is headed in the right direction, and Indonesia (43%)—but in both of these countries the trend is also downwards. Only in a few developing and middle-income countries—Peru, Russia, Turkey, and Nigeria—is optimism on the increase. With concern on many global issues very high, and trust in institutions low, it may be that the public perceives a sense of drift and absence of leadership in dealing, not only with the economic crisis, but also with such problems as climate change, the spread of disease, and terrorism.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
In contrast to the banking industry’s declining reputation in the UK and US, where public anger against the finance industry has been seen in drawn-out public protests, GlobeScan tracking reveals that respect for the sector’s reputation remains relatively solid in China and India.
The data shows that while Britons’ and Americans’ respect for banks and financial companies is falling, the industry’s reputation has not suffered the same fate in China and India. In fact, Indians have become increasingly likely to say they respect the banking sector—almost half (49%) now say they do, compared to 39 percent in 2008. Public esteem also remains strong in China despite a slight decrease in the past year.
Banks, and the economy in general, have fared relatively well in India and China—counteracting the negative trend seen elsewhere. New investments by Indian banks such as installing ATMs and establishing new offices throughout the country have created jobs and better services and improved the sector’s reputation.
Higher levels of respect for banks and financial companies in China and India also reflect relatively positive views there of the sector’s social performance. When asked how well they fulfill their responsibilities to society compared to other types of companies, Chinese and, in particular, Indian respondents rate the industry more positively; 58 percent of Indians and 33 percent of Chinese rate banks and finance companies “among the very best” or “above average,” compared to 14 percent, each, of Americans and Britons.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)