As Asia grapples with direct impacts from weather extremities, a new survey has revealed that floods, heatwaves and landslides are the top three climate change impacts that concern Southeast Asians.
The three top climate change impacts that most respondents chose were floods (22.4%), heatwaves (18.1%) and rainfall-induced landslides (12%).
The Southeast Asia Climate Outlook: 2022 Survey Report (the third edition of the survey) also found hesitancy among Southeast Asians to phase out coal immediately.
The survey that is conducted annually assesses the attitudes and sentiments of citizens in the region towards climate change.
Among the nearly 1,400 respondents who answered the survey between June and July 2022, Cambodians and Malaysians were most concerned about flooding.
Heatwaves were Myanmar’s biggest problem, with nearly 30% of respondents registering the impacts from heatwaves as serious. It ranked as the top concern for mid-sized cities in Southeast Asia with resident sizes of 250,000 to 1m.
Loss of biodiversity, which had consistently ranked second in past surveys, has now slipped from the list, with percentages of respondents from the different countries who consider it serious hovering at only about 10%.
According to the survey, close to a third of respondents identified extreme weather events as the main threat to their country’s food supply.
The survey also found the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war altering attitudes of Southeast Asians towards coal and fossil fuel consumption. When asked if ASEAN countries should phase out coal consumption either immediately or by 2030, about 72.5% of respondents said yes, a slight decline from the 79% as in the 2021 survey.
Singapore emerged as the top choice of 53% respondents to become the region’s climate leader. Most respondents believed that the city state had the potential to take up a stronger leadership role.
Filipinos showed the strongest sense of urgency in addressing the climate threat and were the most willing to accept a carbon tax, even though the report noted that there was low awareness among respondents that the country does not yet have a concrete net-zero target.
On the point of biggest obstacle to decarbonisation in their respective countries, 50.9% respondents cited insufficient financial resources, and 50.4% felt that countries lack the research and development capabilities, technology and expertise to push related efforts. M