The Greendex Survey, the result of a partnership between National Geographic and GlobeScan, is a global tracking study developed to quantify and monitor consumer attitudes toward environmentally sustainable consumption. In addition to providing a global perspective on behavioural trends across 17,000 consumers in 17 countries, the survey provides each respondent with their own “Greendex Score”, a calculation of their environmental footprint. As we gear up for the Greendex 2014, we decided to revisit some of our 2012 data to provide … “Out of sight, out of mind: How businesses can tackle future discounting to enable sustainable consumer behaviour”
Download the Press Release (PDF) 25 February 2013 – Environmental concerns among citizens around the world have been falling since 2009 and have now reached twenty-year lows, according to a multi-country GlobeScan poll. The findings are drawn from the GlobeScan Radar annual tracking poll of citizens across 22 countries. A total of 22,812 people were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone during the second half of 2012. Twelve of these countries have been regularly polled on environmental issues since 1992. Asked how … “Environmental Concerns “At Record Lows”: Global Poll”
This article by Sam Mountford was originally published on GreenBiz.com Feb 7 2013, as part of our Proof Points blog series. 7 February 2013 – Environmental concern among the global public is on the wane across a whole range of issues, GlobeScan’s most recent polling finds. But, with no sign that the problems facing the planet are any less severe – quite the reverse – how do we explain this increase in apathy? The trend is certainly stark. GlobeScan tracks public concern on six … “Why We’re Turned Off and Tuned Out to Environmental Crises”
Findings from a new public opinion poll conducted as part of The Regeneration Roadmap (a joint project by GlobeScan and SustainAbility)
As high-level talks at the Doha Climate Conference got underway this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned humanity was locked in a “race against time” against global warming. However, GlobeScan’s most recent opinion polling shows that the global public’s concern about the climate continues to fall sharply. After rising for much of the last decade, the proportion of people describing climate change as a “very serious” issue dropped in the wake of the failed 2009 Copenhagen intergovernmental summit, and … “As Doha conference gets underway, climate concern falling sharply”
When BP posted a $1.4bn loss this week (once oil price fluctuations are taken into account), many analysts pointed to the role played by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The company announced this week that a further $847 million has been set aside to pay the costs incurred by that disaster.
Yet GlobeScan’s Radar 2012 global public opinion data indicates that BP’s response to the spill may be allowing it to recover lost ground in public esteem faster than many had predicted. The British firm emerges at or near the top of the list of firms considered to be environmentally responsible. Globally, BP is one of the top twenty most-mentioned corporations when people are asked to name a large company that is a leader in environmental issues.
In the UK, moreover, BP is the firm most frequently mentioned as being environmentally responsible (6%), and in the US it is the second most frequently mentioned (5%), behind only General Electric. Note that no company is cited by more than 4% of global respondents (due to the wide diversity of national firms mentioned) and 44% of people globally, and that higher proportions still in the UK and USA could not name, or chose not to name, an environmentally responsible company.
This uptick in public perception is welcome news for the embattled company, trading as it does in a market driven by more than tangible assets. The reasons given by respondents for naming BP as a responsible company indicate that it has benefitted from low expectations for corporate responsibility in general, and oil company behavior in particular. The unstated assumption is that companies will not clean up their mess, but will “cut and run” once profits are threatened.
While many undoubtedly still see the company as an environmental villain, these figures suggest that paying substantial compensation to those affected by the spill, and pouring resources into the clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico—and being seen to do these things—has enabled BP to cut through public cynicism and start to rebuild its reputation.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 1, 2012
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
While a deal may be emerging at the Rio+20 sustainable development conference, it is already being criticized as inadequate to address pressing global challenges, particularly in terms of environmental protection and mitigating climate change. The inability of political leaders to agree to radical policies—changes that could prove unpalatable to their electorates in the midst of economic crisis—is often cited as a reason for the failure of recent UN summits to meet expectations.
Nonetheless, the latest GlobeScan public attitudes tracking suggests that most citizens around the world remain optimistic that progress on environmental protection will be made over the next two decades—and those in the world’s major emerging powers are significantly more optimistic than many of their developed-world counterparts.
Summit hosts Brazil, and China, emerge as the most bullish about the prospects of leaders making environmental progress in the decades to come (77% optimistic in both cases, with 35% very optimistic in Brazil). Emerging economic powers Indonesia and Mexico are not far behind. Among developed economies, Germans are the most optimistic (67%), followed by Americans (62%)—despite the US administration being widely seen as an obstacle to a more far-reaching agreement at Rio.
While optimists are also in the majority in the UK, Canada, and France, two in five or more are pessimistic in each of countries. However, the only country with a majority of pessimists is Greece—in keeping with the very downbeat worldview apparent in our recent polling there. This suggests that, overall, electorates may be more willing to accept a switch to environmentally sustainable policies than is sometimes assumed.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 1, 2012
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
It is often asserted that a responsible approach towards the environment is a luxury that emerging economies—with large proportions of their populations often remaining in poverty—are unable to afford, and that their top priority must be economic growth, whatever the cost.
However, GlobeScan’s and SustainAbility‘s most recent survey of global consumers, conducted in collaboration with National Geographic, shows that those in emerging economies are even more likely than their developed-world peers to reject the notion that environmental responsibility and economic prosperity are mutually exclusive.
The survey among consumers across 17 countries asked them to say whether they thought a Green Economy would be more or less effective than today’s economy in addressing a range of environmental and social challenges—and found that, globally, consumers thought a Green Economy would be more effective in all areas except for the creation of low-paying jobs.
Consumers in emerging economies are much more optimistic about the overall impact of a Green Economy than those in industrialized countries—particularly on “improving quality of life.” In those emerging economies, net expectations of the Green Economy’s effectiveness at “improving quality of life” are nearly 20 points higher than in developed economies. Similarly, the Green Economy’s effectiveness at “increasing long-term economic growth,” “reducing poverty,” and “creating high-paying jobs” is rated much more highly in emerging economies than in industrialized ones, as this chart shows.
Emerging-economy governments—notably in China—having taken a hard-line stance against tougher environmental targets in international climate negotiations in the past, but these findings suggest that they may be underestimating their peoples’ ability to take a long-term view.
Finding from a recent Regeneration Roadmap press release on Green Economy.
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
The potency of water as a political issue in the world’s major emerging economies was underlined again this week when it was reported that water levels had plunged in the Siang river in India’s north-east. Allegations were levelled that China—where water stress is also a major concern—had diverted much of the water on the Chinese side of the border, preventing it reaching farmers and residents who depend upon on it in the Indian state of Assam.
This controversy is not surprising, given the central importance that Indian citizens attach to water as an issue, according to Globescan’s global attitudes tracking. Our most recent data reveal that Indians consider fresh water shortages to be the most serious of a range of environmental problems, with nearly seven in ten (68%) rating them as “very serious”—up nearly ten percentage points since 2008. Furthermore, water pollution was cited this year as the second most serious environmental problem, with 59% rating it “very serious,” well ahead of problems like climate change (47%).
With the Indian economy registering its seventh consecutive quarter of slow growth, water insecurity, already an important concern, is likely to become increasingly central to the politics of this huge emerging economy.
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)