74% of people in nine middle-income countries feel climate change impacts their communities.
Many said they were willing to alter their lifestyles to mitigate effects.
Concerns about droughts, heatwaves and floods are prevalent, especially among younger and educated adults.
Confidence in international efforts varies, with significant trust in India, Indonesia and Kenya.
Climate change no longer just elicits feelings of impending doom; for people in middle-income countries, it is a crisis they face every day, disrupting their lives and livelihoods.
Some 74 per cent of the people interviewed in a new survey said climate change has impacted their community to some extent, according to Pew Research Centre that conducted the survey. Data were drawn from 12,375 adults living in nine middle-income countries: Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and Turkey.
At least half the respondents in the three Latin American countries said the climate crisis has impacted their societies a great deal.
Climate change has made the places they live so inhospitable that a majority of the respondents said they are willing to change the way they live and work to escape the impacts.
The findings came days ahead of the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Belém, Brazil.
Signs of climate anxiety were also visible in the populations studied, with most of the respondents saying they are at least somewhat worried about direct impacts of global climate change in the future. "For instance, 90 per cent or more in Brazil and Indonesia express this concern, and majorities in Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya and South Africa are very concerned about personal harm from global climate change. "
Droughts or water shortages was the biggest fear perceived by a median of 47 per cent of respondents. Other factors included long periods of unusually hot weather (21 per cent), floods or intense storms (19 per cent), rising sea levels (7 per cent).
The previous survey to understand people's perception was done in 2015 and in the decade since then, concerns of personal harm from climate change increased in Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia. But in Nigeria, India, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, fewer people were worried about this.
Younger adults in India, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico were more likely than older adults to say they are concerned climate change will harm them personally.
The share saying they would be willing to make a lot of changes ranges widely — from 17 per cent in Turkey up to 53 per cent in Kenya. Age and level of education played a role in deciding how much a person was ready to change their life and work to prevent the impacts of climate crisis.
Younger adults (ages 18-34) are more likely than older adults (more than 50 years) to say they are willing to make some or many lifestyle / work changes.
And in most of the countries, adults with at least upper secondary education were more likely than those with lower education to say they would make such changes.
A median of 62 per cent expressed at least some confidence that the international community’s actions will significantly reduce the effects of global climate change.
In India, Indonesia and Kenya, at least 70 per cent adults have at least some confidence in the international community’s ability to reduce climate impacts; meanwhile fewer than half do so in Argentina, Mexico and Turkey.
Across the nine countries, a median of 59 per cent say a country’s carbon emissions (rather than its wealth) should matter more in deciding how much it should do to address climate change.
In Turkey, opinion is more divided: 46 per cent say emissions matter more; 43 per cent say wealth should matter more. Indians, on the other hand, were found to be as likely to not answer the question as they are to say national wealth should matter more.
A direct relationship was observed between favourable views of the United Nations and confidence in the international community.