Save the Children reported this week that the recent rise in global food prices was taking its toll on families across the developing world, and that half a billion children risk being born physically and mentally stunted over the next fifteen years if no concerted action is taken. GlobeScan’s recent polling for Save the Children, as well as its regular global attitudes tracking, confirm the scale of the problem.
GlobeScan’s own annual tracking research reveals high levels of concerns about the rising cost of food and energy among citizens across the world, with proportions saying this issue is “very serious” particularly high in the Philippines and the Latin American countries surveyed. The rising cost of food and energy is also of relatively high concern in China and Russia; concern has grown significantly in China over the past two years as food prices have continued to rise rapidly in that market.
In many developing countries, the effects of rising food and energy prices are particularly felt among those who have not benefitted from economic growth that has frequently been concentrated to specific sections of society, often leaving behind low-income and low-educated groups. In a recent survey fielded by GlobeScan on behalf of Save the Children in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, and Bangladesh—countries where half the world’s malnourished children live—large majorities in all countries polled say that the rising price of food has become their most pressing concern this year. Concern is most acute in Nigeria and Bangladesh, where people overwhelmingly feel that food price rises are the most pressing issue they face.
A third of parents surveyed revealed that their children complained they didn’t have enough to eat. Around one in six parents (16%) – and nearly one in three in Nigeria (30%) – say they have allowed their children to skip school to help pay for their family’s food. The charity warns that if no concerted action is taken, half a billion children will be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
The consequences of high oil prices–still around $100 a barrel–are making themselves felt again. Exxon has announced increased profits, and prices at the fuel pump are at near-record levels.
So the fact that fears of further price increases are at the top of consumers’ concerns about energy, according to GlobeScan’s world public attitudes tracking, should not come as a surprise. Nearly one in four citizens (23%) across nine countries polled since 1998 now cites rising prices as their primary energy-related concern.
The latest data also reveals the impact of last year’s incident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant. Concern about the risks posed by nuclear power had fallen away significantly the last time this question was fielded in 2008, as many governments contemplated ramping up their nuclear programs in response to increasing concerns over energy security and supply. But the Fukushima accident has clearly made many think again, and worries about the risks of nuclear power are now mentioned as the primary energy-related concern by nearly as many (21%) as possible price increases.
However, other recent GlobeScan findings suggest that some countries are bucking the trend. While support for building new nuclear power stations has fallen in many countries, it has remained stable in the USA, and has risen in the UK. With support for nuclear expansion also high in China and Pakistan, it is too soon to say that public opinion has swung decisively against nuclear power.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
Citizens of some of the world’s richest, most democratic nations are questioning whether their countries are really governed in accordance with the public will, according to the latest GlobeScan tracking.
In 2011, GlobeScan asked citizens to say whether they considered that their country was “governed by the will of the people.” With many of the countries also surveyed back in 2002, the findings show how perceptions have shifted over nearly a decade.
They reveal that there have been significant decreases in four of the world’s biggest economies—Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA—in the proportions who believe that the will of the people governs their country. Proportions who believe this have fallen from 32% to 21% in Germany, 44% to 29% in the USA, 27% to 21% in the UK, and 15% to 4% in Japan—the lowest proportion in the survey.
Despite unrest about alleged vote-rigging in recent parliamentary elections, Russia is one of the few countries where the number of citizens satisfied with the government’s responsiveness to public opinion has increased over the decade—still, fewer than one in five Russians (19%, up from 12%) believes that the country is governed by the will of the people.
With negative perceptions of public power more common in the world’s major democracies than in China (where 47% believe the country is governed by the will of the people), it seems that elections in themselves may no longer be sufficient to create a strong sense of popular sovereignty.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
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)