Climate change a global emergency, feels millions  

In one of the biggest ever surveys, about two-thirds of over 1.2 million people surveyed says that climate change is a global emergency and needed urgent action to overcome the crisis. The UN published the results of the survey on January 26.

The survey named “People’s Climate Vote” mentions that people supported more comprehensive climate policies to respond to the challenges. The survey by the United Nations Development programme (UNDP) covered 50 countries.

The UNDP says that urgent climate action had the largest number of supporters in the world. The people clearly have a message for the policy makers, the UN agency said.

the survey has its significance as countries are in the process of developing new national climate pledges called Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

The UNDP in the survey asked about the belief in climate emergency and about the policies across six areas – economy, farms, food, energy, transportation, protecting people, and nature that they wanted the government’s to enact.

FINDINGS

1. 72 per cent of the people in Western Europe and North America said that climate change is a global emergency. 65 percent in Asia, 64 percent in Arab States, 63 per cent in Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and Pacific, 61 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa said the same.
2. 59 percent of the people said that the world should do everything necessary and urgently against climate change. When 20 percent opined of acting slowly, ten percent said that the world was already doing enough.
3. With respect to policies as first priority, the UNDP Survey found 54 per cent support to Conservation of forests and land, 53 per cent to Solar, wind and renewable power and 52 per cent to Climate-friendly farming supported investing
4. In countries with high emissions from deforestation and land-use change, people were for conserving forests and land.

There were clear calls for renewable energy in higher emitting countries

5. There was broad support for climate-friendly farming internationally. However, countries with the largest agricultural sectors only showed mixed results.
6. People wanted to make companies pay for pollution in seven of twelve high-income countries
7. Nine out of ten of the countries with the most urbanized populations backed clean transport.
8. The people wanted authorities to have good infrastructure to protect them from extreme weather.
9. Keeping the ocean and waterways healthy
10. Wasting less food than wasting less energy