Canada Climate Week Xchange Part 2: Advancing Public Support for Net-Zero Future

The Canada Climate Week Xchange (CCWX) took place across Canada from November 24–30, 2025, bringing together innovators, researchers, and leaders to support collaborative solutions and opportunities on the road to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.

This conference chatter series spotlights a session from each day's events. Part 1 of the series can be found here.

The session we're spotlighting from November 25, 2025, was “Activating Public Support in Canada for a Net-Zero, Nature-Positive Future: Where Are We and What Will It Take to Get to 2030?” from GlobeScan, a global organization that provides clients with sustainability insights, strategies, and action plans.

The presentation provided insights from GlobeScan's recent Societal Shift report on global public opinion on climate change, nature, and net-zero. The research was conducted in July and August 2025 in 33 markets around the world with 1,000 respondents in each market.

The report highlights five insights that show that while climate change remains an important topic, the stresses of an economically and geopolitically complex world are competing for space in the anxious minds of many people.

First, economic pressure is changing the way people think about the environment and the actions they are taking to support sustainability. The tension between protecting the environment and the rising costs of living is forcing people to deprioritize sustainable actions and reject financial trade-offs, highlighting the need for policy messaging that emphasizes the integration of environmental protection and economic growth.

Second, as support for sustainability wanes in industrialized nations in the Global North, nations on the frontlines of climate change in the Global South show increasing support for the transition to a green economy. With economies that rely more heavily on natural resources and suffer greater damage from climate-driven weather events, the Global South demonstrates the importance of strategies and policies that acknowledge local realities.

“We see that the Global South really leads in terms of concern and commitment to change,” said Tove Malmqvist, principal with GlobeScan, “whereas industrialized countries like Canada exhibit lower levels of concern and less willingness to sacrifice.” Malmqvist attributed the attitude of northern industrialized countries to a greater sensitivity to cost and the feeling that changing behavior is not affordable.

Third, respondents said that messaging about climate change is evoking powerful emotions including not only fear and anxiety but also optimism. People are having strong responses to messaging about the environment, showing that clear and actionable communications based on evidence are most likely to produce responses that encourage people to get involved in the fight against climate change.

Fourth, while people are generally supportive of policies that support sustainability, they are looking for systemic policy changes that do not rely on sacrifice at the personal level. Instead, people are looking to governments and companies to take the lead in creating the social infrastructure that supports the sustainable transition.

Finally, despite the fact that people are looking for leadership from governments and businesses, they feel that there has only been modest progress towards transitioning to a sustainable world and preventing the impact of climate change.

“People are saying that they would like measures and initiatives that provoke more systemic impact and change at a high level instead of actions that are important but not as impactful, such as…planting trees and things like that,” said Álvaro Almeida, director of GlobeScan. “They are perceived as good progress, but not good enough to provoke change compared to tech solutions, supporting NGOs, and forcing companies to reduce impact.”

Creating Compelling Sustainability Messaging

For Canadians, concern about climate change remains high, but it has retreated in the face of worries about affordability and geopolitical instability. Malmqvist said that issues like war, corruption, and human rights dominate Canadian concerns, with environmental issues still causing anxiety but competing for attention.

“You have war and conflict at the top with 63% saying it's very serious,” said Malmqvist. “And then you see a range of more social issues like hunger, extreme poverty, human rights, and corruption, and then the environmental issues pop up at around 50%.”

Malmqvist noted that concern about climate change has come down in many countries since the pandemic after reaching a high after the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016.

“Almost every country that we surveyed this year is seeing a little bit of a drop compared to 2024,” said Malmqvist. “We speculate that maybe people are feeling fatigued, feeling this hypernormalization where we are kind of accepting reality and carrying on because there's nothing else that you can do. People are feeling sort of defeated about it.”

GlobeScan asked respondents what messaging would be most useful to help them prioritize environmental concerns over competing issues like cost of living and geopolitical tension.

“We found in Canada the key message to really inspire people is affordability,” said Malmqvist, who noted that communicating about environmental issues should include discussions about the ways in which simple, achievable, and sustainable lifestyle choices can contribute to affordability and help people save more of their money.

The survey also found that Canadians prefer evidence-based communications about sustainability.

“This may reflect a little bit of skepticism, but also huge faith in science and fact-based messaging in Canada,” said Malmqvist.

Malmqvist said it is also important to layer messaging with the positive impact sustainability can have.

“Show the evidence of what it will do if you save water, and that if other Canadians do it, this is the effect it will have,” said Malmqvist, emphasizing that providing numbers and data on the impact of individual lifestyle choices can improve sustainability messaging as it competes with other concerns.

The research also showed that while a combination of these elements supports the most effective messaging about sustainability, countries will have different priorities that should determine which elements get the most attention.

“In the U.S., people want simplicity and convenience,” said Malmqvist. “But in Canada, affordability, long-term cost savings, and fact-based evidence are most important.”