AS I mentioned in my previous column ("Yes, Karen, CO2 does cause global warming," March 7), The Manila Times' editorial on March 2 ("Climate change focus needs a rethink") sparked my interest because I find a great deal of the world's approach to dealing with climate change and even communicating about it to be highly problematic. More specifically, the topic of the editorial reminded me of another, somewhat similar bit of news from last year that seemed to back The Times' editorial's assertion that climate change is being put in the wrong context by the big institutions driving climate action, at least as far as developing countries are concerned.
The subject of the editorial was the implications of the most recent World Bank Country Opinion Survey, which it conducts annually among its client countries in order to assess what their main concerns are and their perceptions of the World Bank's work. In the survey, the respondents, who were government officials, civil society representatives, academic and business experts, and media people, were asked to rank 17 general concerns in order of importance. These include education, health, food security, employment, climate change and public governance. Climate change was not among the top concerns; education, health and food security were, in that order. In fact, climate change only ranked 11th.
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