Majority of Brazilians support city climate action

Young Brazilians are particularly impacted by extreme heat, with 82 per cent of Brazilians under 35 saying they’ve dealt with this, compared to 71 per cent of Brazilians over 50.

Brazilians are looking to their cities to lead on climate action and invest more in climate action. A huge majority of Brazilians expect their city to take climate action (88 per cent). Similar proportions of Brazilians say they want their city to invest more in climate action (85 per cent), and they want the national government to invest funds in city climate action (90 per cent).

While Brazilians want to see more support for cities to take action, cities share the responsibility to take and fund climate action with other governments. All levels of government share responsibility for tackling climate change, according to the Brazilian public.

A majority of Brazilians say national governments globally (59 per cent), the Brazilian government (56 per cent), and their mayor (50 per cent) all have a responsibility to act. More than six in 10 Brazilians also expect their national, state, and local government to fund climate initiatives in cities

Young Brazilians are more likely to be thinking about climate change regularly and more likely to take personal action to address it.

Brazilians believe city-level climate action is effective in combatting climate change and improving their communities. Impressively, nearly three-quarters of Brazilians believe city climate actions are both combatting climate change (72 per cent) and having an impact on their daily quality of life (74 per cent).

Brazilians strongly support a wide range of climate policies. More than 90 per cent of the public wants Brazil to advance clean water and air policies, reforestation, renewable energy, and infrastructure upgrades to deal with extreme weather.  More than 80 per cent of Brazilians support planting more trees and creating more green spaces to cool cities, expand rainwater management programs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create clean air zones, expand public transport, and install more solar panels.

Young Brazilians are more likely to be thinking about climate change regularly and more likely to take personal action to address it. Brazilians under 35 are 14 percentage points more likely to be thinking about climate change often or all the time compared to Brazilians over 50. Young adults are also much more likely to be talking about climate change with friends and family, attending environmental events, working on climate issues in their community, volunteering on the issue, or writing to their elected officials about climate change.

The U20, co-hosted by Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and convened by C40 Cities and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), takes place 14–17 November, immediately before the G20 Summit in Rio. Cities at U20 will look to set a global agenda for ambitious, people-centred action to deliver the world’s climate goals.