The public’s views on climate policies in seven large global south countries

nature climate change Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02389-9 The public’s views on climate policies in seven large global south countries Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 24 June 2025 Published online: xx xx xxxx Check for updates Richard T. Carson1, Jiajun Lu2, Emily A. Khossravi3, Gunnar Köhlin4, Erik Sterner 4, Thomas Sterner 4 & Dale Whittington 5 While public attitudes regarding climate change have been widely explored in the global north, survey work is still limited in the global south countries. Here we analysed survey data (n = 8,400) from Chile, Colombia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Vietnam to understand climate knowledge, trusted information sources and policy preferences. Our results indicate that scientists stand out as the most trusted information source in all countries except Vietnam and trust in scientists correlates with increased climate knowledge. Respondents agree with the urgency of the climate change challenge, but prioritizing policies to mitigate climate change substantially declines when policy trade-offs are introduced. There is broad agreement for earmarking carbon tax revenue towards health and education, renewable energy subsidies and clean technology R&D, but little support for deficit reduction or uniform rebates. Many studies of public preferences regarding climate change have been conducted in the USA1,2 and other global north countries3–6. By contrast, survey work in the global south countries is much more limited7–12. Much of this research uses omnibus surveys conducted across multiple countries, such as the Gallup World Poll and World Values Surveys, which include a few climate-related questions that are repeated across years. Some in-depth surveys in low- and middle-income countries focus on country-specific climate issues. However, survey work facilitating cross-country comparisons that does not use the major omnibus surveys is relatively rare. As Bergquist et al.13 note in their meta-analysis of 85 studies analysing public views on climate-related taxes and laws, most of the included studies used data from the global north. Africa and India were represented with only one study each, and South America was not represented at all. We report on a large purpose-built survey conducted in seven global south countries: Chile, Colombia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Vietnam. Two recent unpublished studies that complement ours also involve survey work across multiple global south countries9,10. The first represents an extension of the omnibus approach and collects responses from Facebook users in many countries using a modern set of climate opinion questions. The second is more comparable to ours in administering a lengthy online questionnaire in fewer countries. The issues chosen for coverage in these two surveys and how they are conceptualized are different than in the survey reported here, emphasizing how little about the public’s views on climate in the global south is reliably known. These two studies are addressed further in the Supplementary Information. There are tangentially related recent papers focused on public acceptance of new climate-related technologies that compare global north and global south contexts. For instance, Contzen et al.14 document that, while solar radiation management garners limited acceptance overall, respondents in climate-vulnerable global south regions express notably stronger support—often driven by perceived urgency. Baum et al.15 observe similar patterns of higher acceptance for carbon dioxide removal and find substantial concern over inequitable risk distribution. Fritz et al.16 look at both these technologies in studies that involved large survey efforts in 22 global north and global south countries, backed up with qualitative research involving multiple focus groups. Another complementary study looks at trust in scientists Cologna et al.17,18, generally finding high levels of confidence in trust in climate science but also highlighting ideological and political divides. We designed an online survey that collected information on respondents’ knowledge about climate change, trusted information sources and opinions on climate policy. The survey contained a University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. 2International Business School, Zhejiang University, Haining, China. 3College of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. 4University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. 5Chapel Hill UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. e-mail: 1 Nature Climate Change Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02389-9 Table 1 | Individual Knowledge Question Response by Country Knowledge Question Chile Colombia India Kenya Nigeria South Africa Vietnam All % Correct % Incorrect % Not Sure Burning Oil Produces CO2 CO2 is harmful to plants* Nuclear power plants emit CO2 during operations* The same quantity of CO2 is more harmful to climate than (natural) methane* The global CO2 concentration in atmosphere has increased during the past 250 years Climate change is mainly caused by human activities Last century’s global increase in temperature was the largest in the past 1,000 years Today’s global CO2 concentration has occurred in the past 650,000 years* A warmer climate will increase the melting of polar ice and raise the sea level Warming leads to more extreme events such as droughts, floods and storms. A warmer climate will increase water evaporation and decrease sea level* The climate to change evenly all of the world* Knowledge Index 1 #Correct - #Wrong Knowledge Index 2 #Correct Mean 75.5% 69.2% 71.9% 74.6% 62.7% 60.7% 80.7% 70.4% 6.9% 6.4% 8.0% 8.1% 11.1% 11.0% 6.2% 8.2% 17.6% 24.5% 20.1% 17.3% 26.3% 28.2% 13.1% 21.4% 34.4% 30.4% 40.6% 69.2% 56.9% 51.3% 25.4% 43.8% 41.4% 41.0% 42.9% 22.6% 29.8% 35.8% 52.2% 37.8% 24.2% 28.6% 16.5% 8.2% 13.2% 12.9% 22.5% 18.4% 12.3% 10.2% 14.1% 13.4% 9.7% 14.0% 12.5% 12.3% 53.9% 51.6% 57.9% 60.9% 60.4% 52.4% 63.5% 56.9% 33.8% 38.1% 27.9% 25.7% 29.9% 33.6% 24.0% 30.8% 17.4% 15.4% 15.5% 20.4% 19.6% 18.9% 10.6% 16.7% 42.9% 42.3% 57.5% 44.5% 39.5% 40.6% 60.2% 46.6% 39.7% 42.3% 27.1% 35.1% 40.9% 40.6% 29.2% 36.3% 76.0% 74.9% 73.1% 78.8% 69.8% 71.4% 78.1% 74.2% 6.4% 4.9% 8.8% 4.2% 5.0% 4.9% 5.9% 5.7% 17.6% 20.1% 18.1% 16.9% 25.2% 23.7% 15.9% 20.1% 84.5% 85.5% 81.2% 91.5% 80.1% 85.6% 86.9% 84.7% 8.2% 6.0% 9.2% 5.9% 11.8% 8.6% 6.4% 7.9% 6.9% 8.4% 9.6% 2.6% 8.1% 5.8% 67.7% 7.3% 59.7% 54.0% 66.3% 52.3% 50.3% 54.6% 75.7% 58.7% 10.3% 13.5% 8.9% 12.0% 8.9% 7.2% 6.3% 9.6% 30.0% 32.5% 24.7% 35.7% 40.9% 38.2% 17.9% 31.7% 18.6% 17.0% 11.7% 19.9% 17.9% 16.6% 9.4% 15.8% 44.2% 43.9% 51.4% 30.1% 27.9% 31.4% 56.0% 40.6% 37.2% 38.9% 36.9% 49.9% 54.0% 51.9% 34.6% 43.6% (...truncated)