Perceptions among students and young scholars of drivers endangering the Baltic Sea.

In a series of ad-hoc surveys, students and young scholars from various institutions in the Baltic Sea region are asked about their perceptions about the reality and seriousness of climate change, and how these compare to other pressures on the Baltic Sea. The same questionnaire, albeit adopted to the different nationalities, have been run in Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Germany, among students with different backgrounds, such as oceanography, geography, environmental sciences and chemistry. The surveys were done in 2019, 2020 and 2021. While the individual surveys at the different institutes can not be considered representative, the ensemble of the so far 7 surveys provides a consistent summary of what is common understanding, and which issues may be considered less uniformly.

Climate, eutrophication and disposal of waste are listed most often as serious issues, while overfishing and tourism less often, and the construction of bridges and pipelines are least often chosen as serious issue. Climate issues are mostly not considered a scientific issue but a public/political issue, and climate science is mostly tasked with “motivate people to act on climate change” or “determine solutions to climate change” but less so with “define the climate problems and attribute cause of climate change”.