Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
Key developments
Weather-related hunger
‘LARGE-SCALE HUNGER’: A new report from the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch thinktank, found that “around 2.5 million people in Sudan could die from hunger by September 2024”, Middle East Eye reported. The report said “that parts of the country have likely already reached the tipping point at which large-scale hunger transitions into large-scale death”, the outlet wrote. The civil war that broke out in Sudan in April 2023 has disrupted food supply chains and logistics, but the shortage “has been worsened by drought and flooding, likely exacerbated by climate change”, Truthout said. Al Jazeera reported that “more than 25 million people scattered across Sudan, South Sudan and Chad are ‘trapped in a spiral’ of food insecurity”, according to the World Food Programme.
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PROLONGED DROUGHT: Zambia’s environment minister, Collins Nzovu, has warned that the drought that has gripped southern Africa in recent months is “a harbinger of what is in store for the region as the climate crisis worsens”, the Guardian reported. The newspaper continued: “People are reaching the end of their food stores, and importing from other countries in the region has become much harder as they too are feeling the impacts of the drought.” Hydropower capacity has also halved in the country, which receives about 95% of its electricity from dams. The Times of Zambia reported last month that the World Food Programme was giving Zambia $3.3m “to help the country respond to the drought”.
MARGINAL IMPROVEMENT: The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which monitors global hunger, “forecast that 28% of Afghanistan’s population, about 12.4 million people, will face acute food insecurity before October”, the Associated Press reported. This is a “slight improvement” over the previous IPC report, “but underline[s] the continuing need for assistance”, the newswire said. It added that “torrential rains and flash floods” in the northern part of the country last month killed more than 400 people, damaged or destroyed “thousands of homes” and turned farmland into mud. The Afghanistan Times reported that the floods have also “destroyed numerous water systems”, causing “difficulties in accessing sufficient clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing”.
END OF EL NIÑO: Meanwhile, despite the coming end to El Niño, “it is uncertain how soon a transition to a cooler La Niña will bring respite from the heat”, New Scientist wrote. The outlet explained: “El Niño is associated with hotter average temperatures and a distinctive pattern of weather conditions in much of the world.” It noted that background warming heightened the impacts of extreme weather events during this El Niño in many parts of the world, including flooding in Afghanistan and “intense” wildfire seasons in South America and Indonesia. But, it added: “Not all these effects were entirely negative. In the Horn of Africa, for instance, the rain helped ease a drought that has contributed to near-famine conditions in the region.”
Bird flu continues to spread
CASE BY CASE: The US reported a third human case of the H5N1 avian influenza and the first with the “respiratory symptoms that are more typical of human influenza infections”, CNN reported. All three cases so far have occurred in workers on dairy farms who had direct contact with infected cows. The outlet added that “the addition of respiratory symptoms doesn’t necessarily indicate that the virus has become more dangerous or that it may transmit more easily from person to person”. But in the New York Times, virologist Dr Rick Bright wrote that “the current bird flu situation is at a dangerous inflection point”.
SILENCE BEFORE THE STORM: Bright pointed out that the virus has now been found in 69 dairy herds in nine states. But the “agribusiness industry is eerily quiet about bird flu”, Gene Baur, an animal-rights activist, wrote in the Des Moines Register. He added that “lax responses from…industry indicate that there is no rush to spend the time and money needed to address this growing crisis”. Meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Times, a “growing number” of states are moving to legalise the sale of raw milk, despite finding “high levels” of the virus in samples.
TWO FLUS: The first human case of H5N1 avian influenza in Australia was detected two weeks ago, in a child who had recently travelled to India, Reuters reported. The child has “made a full recovery” and there “was a very low chance of others becoming infected”, the newswire wrote. Meanwhile, a different strain of avian influenza has been detected near Melbourne, Reuters reported in a separate piece. The newswire wrote: “Hundreds of thousands of birds have already been destroyed after bird flu was found at two Australian egg farms last month.” According to the Victoria state government, “the outbreak poses no risk to consumers of eggs and poultry products”.
TREATY TALKS STALL: Meanwhile, the World Health Assembly ended without a finalised pandemic treaty, although member states agreed to extend the body’s mandate, with an aim to finalise the treaty by next year’s assembly, according to Down to Earth. The assembly did, however, “adop[t] crucial amendments to the International Health Regulations”. These included “pledging improved access to medical products and financing”, which will help protect the world against future pandemics, the outlet wrote. Al Jazeera explained that it appears that talks broke down over knowledge and technology sharing around new disease-causing pathogens. (For more on the importance of the pandemic agreement, see Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed from earlier this year.)
Offset push
MIXED MESSAGING: The US government announced new rules “to govern the use of voluntary carbon credits [while] seeking to boost confidence” in a market that has seen high-profile projects “failing to deliver” on emission cuts, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, a Financial Times story quoted US treasury secretary Janet Yellen calling for corporate buyers of carbon credits to “prioritise reducing their own emissions” and that participation in voluntary carbon markets should only “complement these efforts”. However, Yellen added that countries “need to use all the tools at our disposal”, including markets and private capital. The new federal guidelines attempt to define what “high-integrity” offsets are, the New York Times wrote, “meaning they can deliver real and quantifiable emissions reductions for projects that wouldn’t have happened otherwise”.
OFFSETS UNRAVELLING: Elsewhere, Bloomberg reported that one of the world’s biggest carbon-offsetting projects, based in Zimbabwe, is being withdrawn from Verra, a “key registry and standards body”. The Kariba forestry project, operated by Carbon Green Investments, “has emerged as one of the most controversial projects in the market for carbon offsets”, Bloomberg added. Kariba’s withdrawal from Verra “risks undermining one of the carbon market’s key insurance mechanisms”, which is a pool of surplus credits “set aside to cover events such as forest fires”, it said. Meanwhile, a SourceMaterial investigation with the Times questioned a claim from offset platform Carbon Done Right that it had “secured 57,000 hectares for offsetting” in Sierra Leone. The investigation found that no such leases had been registered with local authorities.
DWINDLING APPETITE: According to a new report by Ecosystems Marketplace, the market for carbon offsets “shrank dramatically” in 2023, falling from $1.9bn (£1.5bn) in 2022 to $723m (£551m) in 2023, the Guardian reported. The 61% contraction in market size was attributed to a “flurry of scientific studies and media reports that concluded millions of offsets were worthless”, the story adds. However, Prof Julia Jones of Bangor University, who co-authored one such study, told the Guardian – and wrote in Nature Ecology & Evolution – that she was “deeply concerned” that recent media coverage “gives the impression that the very idea of tackling climate change by slowing tropical deforestation is a scam”. She added: “This is not true and the idea could harm forests.”
News and views
‘BOILING NOT WARMING’: Thailand’s marine life is “suffering” due to record ocean temperatures, “worrying scientists and local communities”, the Bangkok Post reported. Mass coral bleaching is underway, with Lalita Putchim, a marine biologist with the country’s department of marine and coastal resources, telling the newspaper: “I couldn’t find a single healthy coral…Almost all of the species have bleached, there’s very little that’s not affected.” The temperatures – reaching close to 33C – are also impacting the livelihoods of local fishers, with potential knock-on effects for food prices and food security, the outlet noted.
POLAND FARMER STRIKES: A DeSmog investigation revealed that Orka – a new Polish farmers’ movement that stormed the country’s parliament on 9 May – rose to prominence “after it was championed by populist politicians”, despite identifying itself as an “apolitical” group of “common farmers”. DeSmog uncovered “a number of far-right links to two of the group’s leading figures”. Rightwing Polish MPs gave Orka “access to the parliament building” and have “also been quick to join” Orka’s protest, which has said it wants to put the EU Green Deal “in the trash”, the outlet added. Politicians named in the piece had not yet responded to DeSmog.
SEABED SUIT: WWF-Norway has sued the Norwegian government “for its controversial decision to open up vast parts of its continental shelf to deep seabed mining”, the Maritime Executive reported. The suit claims that the government’s impact assessment “fails to satisfy minimum requirements of the country’s subsea minerals act”. The outlet added that the NGO had sent an initial notice to the government in April, while the government responded that the lawsuit is “lacking merit”. According to the Guardian, the Norwegian Environment Agency “has also said the impact assessment does not provide a sufficient scientific or legal basis for deep-sea mining”.
WOLVES RETURN: The Irish Times reported that wolf populations are “making a comeback” in Europe “thanks to wildlife protection measures” introduced by the EU. According to the newspaper, the number of wolves has grown 81% since 2012, to more than 20,000, and their range is up 25%. While Spain, host to “one of the largest populations in the EU”, has “tightened” its measures to protect the wolf, a “backlash” is stirring at the EU level, it adds. In December, Ursula Von Der Leyen’s conservative party backed a proposal to downgrade the protected status of wolves, Agriland reported. And, last week, the EU council of agricultural ministers “heard calls for more to be done to address the rise in wolf attacks on livestock”.
NZ’S ‘WAR ON NATURE’: New Zealand’s rightwing government was accused of “waging a war on nature” by environmentalists after it made “sweeping cuts” to climate projects in its 2024-25 budget, the Guardian reported. While the country’s climate minister pointed to flood defences and a waste levy when asked about the absence of new funding for environmental protection, critics described these as “the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff without future-facing climate mitigation plans”, the paper added.
OJ INFLATION: Orange juice makers are considering switching to mandarins as wholesale prices have “gone bananas” following fears of poor harvests in Brazil, the Guardian reported. It added that orange trees in Brazil have been hit by an “incurable disease” after “extreme heat stress and drought during their key flowering period…fuelled by the climate crisis”. Florida, another key growing region, has been “hit by a series of hurricanes and the greening disease, which is spread by sap-sucking insects”, it added. The Financial Times quoted Kees Cools, the president of the International Fruit and Vegetable Juice Association, who said: “We’ve never seen anything like it, even during the big freezes and big hurricanes.”
MONKEY BUSINESS: More than 150 howler monkeys – “midsize primates known for their roaring vocal calls” – have died, apparently of heat stroke, amidst a major heatwave in Mexico, the Associated Press reported. In a northern Mexican animal park, “at least a hundred parrots, bats and other animals have died, apparently of dehydration”, the newswire added. Mexican newspaper La Prensa reported that volunteers were working to “establish drinking fountains for wildlife” in affected communities.
Watch, read, listen
FARMERS’ FURY: An Article 14 story explained why Punjab’s farmers “boycotted” Narendra Modi’s party in India’s general elections that concluded this week.
CHAT GPTREE?: This Guardian podcast looked at the literature to see if the “wood-wide web” – the idea that trees can talk to each other – holds water against new evidence.
FROG FUNGUS: In Sequencer, freelance journalist Max Levy explored the single deadliest pathogen for biodiversity loss: a deadly fungus imperilling amphibian populations.
ISLAND DROUGHT: Euronews Green followed the plight of Sicilian farmers trying to cope with one of the island’s worst droughts on record – exacerbated by poor water management.
New science
Global groundwater warming due to climate change
Nature Geoscience
New research found that, on average, global groundwater is projected to warm by more than 2C over the 21st century under a medium-emissions pathway. By modelling the diffusion of heat from the surface through the ground and maps of water-table depth, researchers calculated monthly temperatures for groundwater around the world from 2000 to 2100. They found that groundwater temperatures increased by an average of 0.3C over 2000-20, although with significant variation from place to place. They concluded that climate change under a medium-emissions pathway could push groundwater resources for 77-188 million people above the “highest threshold for drinking water temperatures set by any country”.
African food system and biodiversity mainly affected by urbanisation via dietary shifts
Nature Sustainability
Increasing rice demand due to urbanisation will increase Africa’s methane emissions by 2.4% by 2050, according to new research. Using projections of urban expansion in Africa, researchers modelled land-use changes and the accompanying production changes for staple crops. They found that more than 3m hectares of land will be converted to urban land under a “middle-of-the-road” narrative – a relatively small proportional decrease, but with potential major impacts on local biodiversity. The authors argued that land-use planning and policymaking should take into account impacts on food production and biodiversity loss.
The human side of rewilding: Attitudes towards multi-species restoration at the public-private land nexus
Biological Conservation
A new study looking to understand US public opinion towards rewilding found more negative attitudes and behaviour when it came to reintroducing species that could harm livestock or humans or those that require more regulation. Conversely, interest groups favoured initiatives that involved conserving species migration as an ecological process. Researchers surveyed five stakeholder groups – “local ranchers, statewide ranchers, rural residents, urban residents and members of conservation organisations” – across the state of Montana. The results, they concluded, highlight “how achieving rewilding in working lands will require community engagement to increase public support and continued assessments of social processes that may limit multi-species restoration”.
In the diary
- 3-13 June: 60th sessions of UN Climate Change’s subsidiary bodies | Bonn, Germany
- 6-9 June: European elections
- 7-8 June: High-level event on ocean action | San Jose, Costa Rica
- 12 June: Sixth meeting of the informal advisory group on benefit-sharing from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources | Online
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Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 5 June 2024: Sudan famine ‘imminent’; Pandemic treaty drags on; US backs offsets with ‘integrity’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.
It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.
The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.
The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”.
The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.
One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.
The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.
Measuring climate actions
The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change.
Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change.
In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.
To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:
| Experiment | What they did |
| Survey one | Participants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity. |
| Survey two | Participants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint. |
| Survey three | Participants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people. |
| Surveys four and five | Participants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. |
The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.
The perception gap
The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours.
For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.
Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%.
The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors.
The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots).
They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.
In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.
The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations.
For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.
The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.
Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate.
In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group.
However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.
Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”.
However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action.
‘Pluralistic ignorance’
Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.
For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says.
However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors.
Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex.
It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.
“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds.
The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.
Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”.
However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life.
As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.
‘Targeted’ communication strategies
The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.
They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions.
The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support.
They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.
Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z
Related
Scientists are ‘most trusted’ source of climate information in global-south survey
Survey: ‘Very few’ Africans place responsibility for climate action on ‘rich nations’
Guest post: How public attitudes towards ‘CO2 removal’ differ in the UK and US
Guest post: How ‘discourses of delay’ are used to slow climate action
The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
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