Climate change in the Zambian mind: communicating risk perception of climate change and variability in Zambia.
Date
2014
Authors
Mweemba, Liberty
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Zambia Social Science Journal
Abstract
No environmental issue has been of such truly global magnitude as the issue of climate
change. And no other global environmental issue has been so controversial, not
because of lack of scientific knowledge, but rather because it is a result of every human
action and will have a direct impact on all human endeavour everywhere. We assessed
whether Zambians perceive climate change as a significant threat and whether their
risk perceptions of climate change influence their awareness of the degradation of the
environment. The paper also examines the affective images Zambians have of global
warming and whether these images can influence individuals’ behaviour to mitigate
global warming. The mean image affect for the most salient image association of global
warming was – 4.60 (SD = 4.36); demonstrating that global warming has primarily
negative connotations for Zambians. The results indicate that greater perception of
the severity of climate change problems cause respondents to be more aware of the
degradation of the environment (β = 0.56, p < .001). The results also indicate that
respondents with higher risk experience and perception prefer the risk management
policies. The result further indicates that the more the respondents experienced the
environmental risks, the higher they perceived the risks. Respondents also felt that
environmental education strategies were very important in changing public behaviour
to reduce the environmental risks. The fundamental claim of this paper, however, is that
better environmental information dissemination, more environmental knowledge, or
more environmental communication alone will not necessarily lead to desirable social
change. While we strongly believe that better understanding has an important role to
play, environmental knowledge that does not keep barriers to behaviour and social
change in mind is unlikely to be effective or sufficient. Successful environmental policies
that mobilize action on climate change education therefore, must take into account
the options that people have for action and their social and cognitive characteristics.
Description
Journal Article
Keywords
Climate change--Zambia.