The People and Climate Change: How Experts and Communities Disagree on Climate Change Impact in South Africa and Botswana

It is a well-established assumption that people in rural areas and people who live in poverty lack awareness of climate change and its impact on the environment and the social condition. Such a view is linked to largely rural populations and too often precarious social conditions. According to Afrobarometer, climate change literacy among the southern African population is rather low. Such numbers help to establish the image of an uninformed majority of the population that derives from the social poor. From 2021 to 2024 we conducted qualitative, micro-sociological research on the perception of the social impacts of climate change in the region. While interviewed experts repeatedly cited stereotypes and clichés, the findings of our research produced surprising results when the rural people as well as the social poor demonstrated significant knowledge about the issue and turned out to be quite thoughtful. The article discusses the state of research on the issue of a lack of climate change awareness within rural populations and among the social poor. The article intentionally gives ample space to these statements in order to convey their richness. The article disproves the mainstream categorisation of the social poor and people from the rural areas as being illiterate of climate change, at least for its sample, and shows the capabilities and expertise that exist in these communities.