A global survey reveals growing concern over environmental issues that directly impact the public in their day-to-day lives. Nick Hughes reports.
As the prospect of a second consecutive summer of drought looms large across Europe, water is rapidly rising up the sustainability agenda.
The number of consumers around the world who rank water shortages in their top three environmental concerns has risen faster in the past year than for any other environmental issue, according to a survey from market research firm Mintel.
In 2021, less than three in ten (27%) people declared themselves worried about water shortages, a figure that rose to 31% in 2022 and 35% in 2023.
Respondents to the Global Outlook on Sustainability report were asked to rank their top three environmental issues of concern in order. Climate change ranked first followed by air quality with water shortages ranking third. That puts water ahead of plastic pollution which has fallen as a priority issue of concern from 36% in 2021 to 32% this year.
Consumers’ growing prioritisation of water shortages as a top three environmental concern reflects how water stress has become a reality worldwide, according to Richard Cope, senior trends consultant at Mintel Consulting. “The ascent of water shortages from fifth to third place in consumers’ list of environmental priorities is symptomatic of a population directly impacted by—as opposed to increasingly informed about—climate change,” he said.
Cope added that this “marks a new era where environmental concerns become pressing issues of self-preservation, such as water and food shortages and a desire to conserve resources for future resilience”. Although plastic pollution remains a prominent concern “it is sliding down consumers’ agendas as they increasingly focus on their personal supply shortages and are educated to realise that other issues might be generating more emissions”.
In key food producing countries like France, Spain and Italy water shortages now rank as the number one environmental issue. Yet in the UK specifically, water shortages still struggle to compete for salience alongside other environmental issues; just 21% cited it as a key concern compared with climate change (43%), plastic pollution (42%), deforestation (30%) and air quality (26%).
Perhaps this will change as summers get hotter and drier under predicted future climate change scenarios? The UK relies heavily on imports of fruit and vegetables from water-stressed countries such as France, Spain and Italy. Domestic UK production is also under threat from a lack of rainfall. Large areas of the UK faced prolonged drought conditions last summer which had a significant, negative impact on crop yields and also led to restrictions on water use.
Offsetting sceptics
Elsewhere, the Mintel report highlighted distrust among the public over the role of offsetting in solving the climate crisis. Two-thirds (66%) of consumers (63% in the UK) said they would prefer for companies to reduce their own carbon emissions rather than use carbon credits from outside of their own area of business. Cope said this showed consumers don’t want brands to engage in carbon offsetting. “Projects preventing deforestation form the basis of most carbon credit programmes used by corporations to assert the carbon neutrality of their businesses or products, but in the wake of media coverage around the challenges in validating these schemes, it’s understandable that the public is challenging companies to become more involved and invested in reducing their emissions directly.”
The use of offsetting to achieve brands’ claims of carbon neutrality has been under the spotlight recently amid scrutiny from campaigners, regulators and the media. Footprint recently revealed that fast food chain Leon has started removing high profile marketing claims for its “carbon neutral burgers”.
Public resistance to the use of offsetting reflects broader scepticism over the environmental claims made by companies; 38% of those surveyed globally by Mintel – and almost half (48%) in the UK – said they don’t trust companies to be honest about their environmental impact.
There was, however, support for environmental labelling schemes that help bring greater clarity to the job of choosing between different products based on their impact. When asked what would encourage them to consider buying more responsible products, 41% (43% in the UK) said they look for a score of how environmentally impactful the product is.
“Based on the success of the food industry’s nutrition traffic light system, consumers want brands to use a similar system that makes it easy to understand the environmental impact of the products they’re thinking of buying and helps them make more sustainable choices,” said Cope.
