Climate security: attitudes to sustainability among university students in the UAE

Abstract

The UAE is faced with serious challenges as a result of climate change, as tropical storms, floods and other extreme weather phenomena are projected to put extreme pressure throughout the country. In order to increase its resilience, the citizens and communities of the UAE will be required to adopt climate-friendly and climate-resilient practices. This research investigated the attitudes of Khalifa University students about climate-friendly policies and practices and examined the drivers for these student attitudes, exploring the causes of any age, gender, origin or education type differences observed between groups. This was done via a quantitative methodology, utilising an online survey design to collect data from KU students. The results showed that overall awareness and support for climate friendly policies and practices was high in the studied population, but mostly for incremental measures that did not require extensive transformation of living habits. Level of study did not affect students’ stance, while college of attendance only slightly affected behaviour, with engineering and physical science students exhibiting more climate friendly practices. Gender was the most evident driver, as female participants were both more supportive of climate friendly policies and practiced more climate friendly behaviour; while students from most emirates showed no differences in attitude, Sharjah participants displayed clearly more support for climate policies, even those that were otherwise unpopular, although this did not reflect greater adoption of green practices. The results are highly informative both for policymakers and leaders of research institutes, to understand the current state of affairs of students’ views over climate-friendly policies, which factors affect them, and what can be done to increase acceptance and adoption of green practices among youth in the UAE.

Date of Award	Nov 2024
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Li-Chen Sim (Supervisor)