For the first time, the World Risk Poll has measured not just how people around the world view the threat of climate change, but also whether they believe their fellow citizens feel the same. In this blog, Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Programme, explores the consequences of the gap between the two.
Do people prefer to drive on the same side of the road? The self-evident answer is yes. But which side to choose? When the rules set one side, most people follow suit.
Driving on the same side of the road is a classic coordination problem. People broadly want the same outcome, but they need a shared rule, signal, or norm to know that everyone will be on the same page.
When people have disagreements, coordination is not enough. There has to be some give and take to reach a compromise through cooperation. This is often much harder to do.
Asking the question
What kind of problem is climate change? Are most people concerned about climate change, so that we need to find a way of getting them coordinated? Or are there very different attitudes? Unlike driving on the same side of the road, there is no self-evident answer. We have to ask people.
This is what sequential editions of the World Risk Poll have done. The 2026 World Risk Poll records the highest ever level of concern, finding that three quarters of adults globally feel threatened by climate change. These findings confirm other surveys showing that people around the world are worried about climate change and believe that something should be done about it.
However, these findings present a paradox. Individual concern is high, yet climate action has still not taken place at the scale, speed, and consistency required to address the challenge.
To counter insufficient action, much information provided to the public and decision makers emphasizes the dangers and risks of not acting, particularly if critical thresholds are crossed. This type of information and messaging has been essential, and it has clearly been effective in eliciting individual awareness and concern. And yet, critical thresholds, like the 1.5 degree increase in temperature compared to the pre-industrial average, have been or are on their way to being crossed.
Perhaps we need to look elsewhere, beyond providing information about the dangers of climate change. After all, climate change is not a problem that can be addressed based on individuals acting alone; it is a generational social challenge that requires coordinated action.
Barriers to action
What the data from the new World Risk Poll report shows is that there is a hidden coordination problem; like driving on the same side of the road, most people want to address climate change. So we have to turn our attention elsewhere, with the question becoming why people do not act on something they all seemingly agree on.
One possible reason is that people do not know how widely shared their worry over climate change is. If they think others do not care as much, opportunities to get coordinated will be missed. In this context, messages that seek to motivate people to cooperate by scaring them with how much they have to lose is shooting at the wrong target. Much evidence suggests that most people around the world think others do not care as much about climate change as they do. And this is an impediment to get people to come together to address climate change. In fact, misperceptions about what others think are a broader challenge across a wide range of issues that are deeply polarized politically.
For the first time, the 2026 World Risk Poll presents evidence on gaps between people’s personal views on climate change and their perceptions of what the rest of society thinks. Consistent with other surveys, the results show widespread misperceptions, the exact nature of which varies across countries. In particular, high-income countries have the widest gaps, where almost half of adults personally see climate change as a very serious threat, but only one in five believe their fellow citizens agree. This suggests vast opportunities to target misperceptions to mobilize society to act more decisively on climate change.
Next steps
Just like rules about which side of the road to drive on help people act on their shared preferences, collective action on climate change could be enhanced if the extent of shared climate concerns is communicated, and not just climate science. Providing information that corrects misperceptions has been shown to be effective in changing social choices, but changes need to be sustained over time.
One possible way of achieving that is to mobilize something else that most people agree on: aspirations for better lives. This is consistent with the World Risk Poll report’s recommendation to tie climate change to top-of-mind daily concerns like health, jobs, infrastructure, and economic stability to raise its everyday salience. By doing so, we can overcome the coordination problem that often prevents effective climate action.