Search

Building conservation research capacity (CRC), especially in developing countries, has long been proposed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Yet, a global evaluation of CRC and its impact on biodiversity conservation is still lacking. Here, by analyzing over 177,000 scientific papers from major conservation journals published after 2000, we derived six indicators of CRC and monitored their changes for the 193 United Nations member countries. We found that while CRC expectedly varied globally, the disparity in CRC between the top and bottom echelons grew over time. While most CRC indicators improved biodiversity conservation status (i.e., the IUCN Red List Index) in high-CRC countries, only the number of collaborating countries had a positive impact for low-CRC countries. Therefore, building CRC must be a top conservation priority, and high-CRC countries must lend greater support for low-CRC countries through meaningful collaborations and funding truly collaborative research in low-CRC developing countries.

Climate change is a threat to human societies and natural ecosystems, yet public opinion research finds that public awareness and concern vary greatly. Here, using an unprecedented survey of 119 countries, we determine the relative influence of socio-demographic characteristics, geography, perceived well-being, and beliefs on public climate change awareness and risk perceptions at national scales. Worldwide, educational attainment is the single strongest predictor of climate change awareness. Understanding the anthropogenic cause of climate change is the strongest predictor of climate change risk perceptions, particularly in Latin America and Europe, whereas perception of local temperature change is the strongest predictor in many African and Asian countries. However, other key factors associated with public awareness and risk perceptions highlight the need to develop tailored climate communication strategies for individual nations. The results suggest that improving basic education, climate literacy, and public understanding of the local dimensions of climate change are vital to public engagement and support for climate action.

It is difficult to detect global warming directly because most people experience changes only in local weather patterns, which are highly variable and may not reflect long-term global climate trends. However, local climate-change experience may play an important role in adaptation and mitigation behaviour and policy support. Previous research indicates that people can perceive and adapt to aspects of climate variability and change based on personal observations. Experience with local weather may also influence global warming beliefs. Here we examine the extent to which respondents in 89 countries detect recent changes in average local temperatures. We demonstrate that public perceptions correspond with patterns of observed temperature change from climate records: individuals who live in places with rising average temperatures are more likely than others to perceive local warming. As global climate change intensifies, changes in local temperatures and weather patterns may be increasingly detected by the global public. These findings also suggest that public opinion of climate change may shift, at least in part, in response to the personal experience of climate change.