85% of countries want a fast transition to clean energy, new UN poll finds

Seven out of ten people around the world want their country to make the switch to clean energy as quickly as possible in a bid to tackle the climate crisis.

That’s according to the United Nation’s second Peoples’ Climate Vote, which surveyed over 73,000 people across 77 countries and found that 85% of those countries support a swift transition away from fossil fuels, including a majority of the world’s 10 biggest oil, gas and coal producing countries.

The survey results “reveal a level of consensus that is truly astonishing," said Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). He urged leaders and policymakers to take action, “especially as countries develop their next round of climate action pledges”

While the message was clear on the speed of tackling the climate crisis, some notable differences of opinion also emerged.

While a majority (53%) of people said they were more worried about the climate crisis than they were last year, 6 in 10 people in the least-developed countries (LDCs) expressed increased concern, compared with half of people in G20 countries.

The world’s 10 most increasingly worried countries are:

1. Fiji (80%)

2. Afghanistan (78%)

3. Mexico (77%)

4. Türkiye (77%)

5. Paraguay (76%)

6. Republic of Korea (76%)

7. Brazil (76%)

8. Ecuador (76%)

9. Colombia (75%)

10. Guatemala (74%).

At the other end of the scale, people in Saudi Arabia have become the least worried about climate change (53%) over the past year.

In 2021, when the last poll was conducted, older people were less concerned about the climate crisis than younger people. That is no longer the case. The 2024 poll revealed that all age groups have become more concerned, including older cohorts, and especially those in LDCs.

What’s more, older people are more likely to think about the climate crisis either daily or weekly compared to younger generations.

Women have been worrying more than men about the climate over the past year (55% vs 51%), finds the poll, although both think about it regularly to a similar degree (57% for women; 55% for men).

The highest proportion of people thinking about climate change are in the Arab states, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean. And yet this doesn’t translate to public support for a rapid energy transition. The countries with the highest level of support for swiftly ditching fossil fuels are Italy, Nigeria and Türkiye (89%), while the least support comes from Morocco (38%), Laos (33%) and Russia (16%).

A quarter of people said their country was failing to address climate challenges, with Haiti registering the most disappointment (73% of Haitians think their country is doing very or somewhat badly). Conversely, around 8 in 10 people in Saudi Arabia, Bhutan and Ethiopia think their countries are doing either very or somewhat well. In other countries, as shown below, there is less clarity around progress.

This discrepancy is reflected in the World Economic Forum’s report, Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2024. Clean energy infrastructure investments reached $1.8 trillion in 2023, it says, but while investment has grown by 40% since 2020, it has been concentrated in advanced economies and China. “In contrast, other emerging and developing economies received less than 15% of the total investment, despite accounting for 65% of the world’s population and generating about a third of global gross domestic product (GDP).”

The report says clean energy investment in developing countries must increase “more than sixfold, from $270 billion currently to $1.6 trillion by the early 2030s”.

It also acknowledges that geopolitical tensions are currently contributing to the slowing momentum of the transition.

Yet 86% of people surveyed for the UN poll want countries to collaborate to tackle the climate crisis.

As UNDP’s Achim Steiner said, “Global citizens want their leaders to transcend their differences, to act now and to act boldly to fight the climate crisis.”