Brits think resource scarcity is a bigger deal than climate or development – survey Alex Evans

July 25, 2011 | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, UK | 9 comments

Chatham House and YouGov published their annual survey of British attitudes on UK international priorities last week, and it’s worth a look. The survey covers both 2,000 or so members of the public, and over 800 opinion formers. Some findings:

First, as expected, the public strongly thinks that the UK spends too much on aid to poor countries (57% say so). I kind of wish the survey had asked them what proportion of GNI Britain spends on aid – I bet the mean estimate would have been over 5% (as opposed to less than 0.7%). But there we are.

And climate fares little better than development. Asked what are the biggest future threats to “the British way of life”, only 18% said climate change – this on a question where respondents could pick three or four issues, not just one. 31% of people are “not currently convinced that climate change is a serious threat”.

But here’s the interesting part. On that same question about future threats, interruptions to energy supply scored 37% - placing it second after terrorism (53%). And “long-term scarcity of essential natural resources, such as water, food and land” scored 30%. Among opinion formers, international financial instability comes a lot higher (59%, as compared to 36% among the public); but energy interruptions and resource scarcity are both in the top five.

It’s the same story when it comes to what UK foreign policy should focus on. Among opinion formers, “ensuring the continued supply of vital resources, such as oil, gas, food and water” comes out top in a list of issues that should be “the main focus of UK foreign policy”, with 48% selecting it as one of up to 3 issues. (Terrorism came joint first; climate was fourth, at 26%. Climate fatigue is not just limited to the public.) The public, meanwhile, put the resource scarcity priority second on the list, after securing Britain’s borders.

So, newsflash: scarcity is now a more resonant frame with both the UK public and UK opinion formers than either climate or development. I’ve suspected for a while that this was the way things were headed, but would certainly not have guessed that the agenda would shift this fast.

To be sure, it’s extremely worrying to see climate and development scoring so poorly. But I think the survey’s findings also signal an important opportunity to build new constituencies for action on climate and development – by pointing out the extent to which action in these two areas can deliver on scarcity concerns. (This has the added benefit of actually being true – in contrast, say, to arguing in favour of aid to fragile states on the basis that it will help protect UK national security, which is a much less convincing argument, as Stewart Patrick notes in the current edition of Foreign Policy.)

By extension, there may also be more political space than we thought for talking about the ‘fair shares’ aspects of resource scarcity that I wrote about in the Oxfam / WWF paper that came out last week (details here). That’s what Chatham House’s Rob Bailey argues too, in a short comment piece in which he notes that,

Both the general public and opinion-formers consider aid largely irrelevant to Britain’s international reputation, and as playing only a small role in serving national interests. This suggests that one argument in defence of aid employed by the Secretary of State for International Development, that Britain is an ‘Aid Superpower,’ is unlikely to resonate with voters, despite the fact that the UK is viewed internationally as a leader.

Would an international development strategy focused on sustainable, equitable and secure access to resources win greater voter approval? Maybe: as we have seen, there is a strong convergence in opinion that resource insecurity is a major threat to the UK and should be a foreign policy priority. This need not be window dressing, as there is a growing body of expert opinion that identifies resource scarcity as the major development challenge for the 21st century.

9 comments »

David on July 25th, 2011 at 3:51 pm:

Alex perhaps it is time you had a dose of reality – and maybe this survey does this for you! Outside of climate change 'scientists', the BBC and 'Climate Change/Global Warming Reporters' people are seeing a big grey cloud of vested interests leading to a downpour of 'green' taxes.

With regard to overseas aid, the do-gooders may have the right intentions, but (and I am sure you know this and have read the relevant tomes) the research and experience shows that it fails in so many ways.

So – you would like to bet that on average most people think overseas aid is >5% of GDP? Hmm – you obviously have a very low opinion of the 2,000 members of the general public and the 800 opinion formers in the survey! Anyway, I am very happy to have a bet that you are wrong about that.
Alex Evans on July 26th, 2011 at 9:16 am:

Which research do you have in mind?
Norman M. Hoggan on July 27th, 2011 at 8:33 am:

We are going to spend billions of dollars to try and prevent a climate change of perhaps 1.0c over the next 90 years when even the Kyoto protocol states that it may not work. Because of the allure to the enviromentalists, this has overshadowed the fact that if population growth is not addressed in merely 50 years the Earth will not have enough resources to feed the population. If that is true then you will not have to worry about how hot the planet gets
David on July 29th, 2011 at 9:50 pm:

Alex, have you read 'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moya?

Rwanda’s President Kagame (2007) “In the last 50 years you have spent US$400 billion in aid to Africa. What is there to show for it?…..in other cases they (the donors) have simply associated with the wrong people and money gets lost and ends up in people’s pockets..”

Senegal’s President Wade (2002) “I’ve never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit. Countries that have developed…have all believed in free markets. Africa took the wrong road after independence”

President Kagame: “The primary reason (failure of aid) is…much of this aid was spent on creating and sustaining client regimes of one type of another, with minimal regard to development outcomes…”
Künstlicher on August 3rd, 2011 at 10:54 am:

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Jerry on August 16th, 2011 at 6:03 pm:

I think another issue is hte fact that we are BURNING oil rather than conserving it for products we will need to make such as types of plastics, rubber and other textiles. We need this stuff to be able to make product to generate power from other resources rather than coal, or other sources that pollute or burn our precious resources into thin air.

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Conservatories Prices on September 25th, 2011 at 11:23 am:

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9 comments »

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