# **3. PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN TAJIKISTAN**

# **Survey Module on Attitudes toward Climate Change**

14. The climate change questionnaire was one of the modules of a larger Pilot Life in Transition Survey (P-LITS 2), which was organized in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan in February 2010. LITS is a joint project of the World Bank and EBRD, which was first carried out between August and October 2006 to assess the impact of transition on people in 29 ECA countries<sup>12</sup> and understand how the attitudes towards market and political reforms are related to individual and households characteristics. The second LiTS round is planned in the fall of 2010, when the updated LiTS questionnaire will be administered in all ECA countries where the LiTS 1 was canvassed in 2006. In preparation for the launch of LiTS 2, a pilot test (P-LITS 2) was carried out in the two Central Asian countries, where the draft LiTS questionnaire was administered to nationally representative samples of 500 respondents per country (i.e. 1,000 respondents in total). Table 1 presents the distribution of the samples across different regions.

**Table 1: Distribution of the P-LITS 2 sample in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan**

||**TAJIKIS**<br>**Region**|**TAN**<br>**# households**<br>**interviewed**|**KAZAKHSTAN**<br>**Region**<br>**# households**<br>**interviewed**|
|---|---|---|---|
||||Almaty|
|Dushanbe||50|South Kazakhstan|
|GBAO||20|Central Kazakhstan|
|Soghd||150|Western Kazakhstan|
|Khatlon||170|Eastern Kazakhstan|
|RSS||110|Northern Kazakhstan|
|**Total**||**500**|**Total**<br>**500**|

15. . The climate change module included many questions from a special Eurobarometer survey on attitudes towards climate change that was canvassed in all EU27 countries in 2008,<sup>13</sup> along with a few additional questions of special interest and relevance to Tajikistan. As a result, the data collected for Tajikistan can be compared not just with Kazakhstan, but also with EU27 countries in selected subject areas. The climate change module is presented in Appendix 1.

# **Climate Change: Awareness of the Main Causes and Consequences**

16. Respondents in P-LITS 2 were asked if they thought they were well informed about the different consequences of climate change, with answers recorded on a 4-point scale: (i) very well-informed, (ii) fairly well-informed, (iii) not very well-informed, and (iv) not at all informed. Public awareness of the different consequences of climate change in Tajikistan is quite high, and in fact comparable to prevailing levels in Kazakhstan and EU27 countries (Figure 3a): a majority of respondents 57 percent) in Tajikistan (felt they were either very well-informed (9 percent), or fairly well-informed (48 percent) about the different consequences of climate change. Within the country, the level of public awareness varied considerably across different regions (Figure 3b): overall awareness levels were highest in Dushanbe (81 percent very/fairy well informed), followed by Soghd (60 percent) and

> 12 Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

> 13 _Europeans’ attitude towards climate change_ Special Eurobarometer 300, Wave 69.2  September 2008. The survey was requested by the European Commission and the European Parliament, and coordinated by the Directorate General for Communication of the European Commission.

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