Nearly half of Filipinos blame disasters on those who routinely abuse the environment, while less than half of Pinoys admitted they have "enough" or "little" knowledge about climate change, private pollster Pulse Asia said on Monday.

Data from Pulse Asia, conducted from 10 September to 14 September, showed that 46 percent of Filipinos think that people who frequently mistreat the environment are to blame for disasters.

While roughly 21 percent think that natural disasters happen as a warning from God, Pulse Asia said that 32 percent of Filipinos blame "natural processes" for such catastrophes.

"For the period June 2022 to September 2023, there is an increase in the percentage of those who believe calamities occur either due to natural processes (+13 percentage points) or as a warning from God (+6 percentage points)," Pulse Asia said.

"The reverse occurs as far as those who blame calamities on the destructive ways of human beings are concerned (-18 percentage points)," it added.

The majority of respondents in Metro Manila (64 percent) Mindanao (48 percent) and Classes D and E (47 percent) believe that human destructive activity is to blame for disasters.

However, between June 2022 and September 2023, this perspective fell in every class (-15 percentage to -26 percentage points), Visayas (-23 percentage points), and Luzon (-28 percentage points).

The remainder of Luzon, Visayas, and Class ABC attributed tragedies to global natural processes (35 to 40 percent) or human damaging behaviors (38 to 46 percent).

On the other hand, Pulse Asia said that 44 percent of Filipinos know much about climate change, while 40 percent have limited knowledge.

"From June 2022 to September 2023, there is an increase in the percentage of Filipinos with enough knowledge about climate change (+10 percentage points) while the reverse occurs in terms of those with little knowledge (-6 percentage points)," the survey said.

While just 41 percent of Filipinos in Metro Manila claim to have a limited understanding of the issue, 48 percent claim to be sufficiently informed about climate change.

All socioeconomic classes and the majority of Filipinos in Luzon and Mindanao, however, claimed to know little or nothing about climate change.

Despite this, 68% of Filipinos believe that climate change is harmful to the environment, with Visayas and Mindanao having a higher prevalence of this opinion.

The survey added that only 11 percent of respondents think that climate change is not hazardous and 21 percent are ambivalent about the issue.

In the meantime, 71 percent of adult Filipinos think that climate change is harmful to them and their families, 12 percent disagree, and 17 percent aren't sure.

Around 1,200 adults from around the country participated in Pulse Asia's "Ulat ng Bayan" poll.

At a 95 percent confidence level, the error margin is 2.8 percent.

Subnational estimates for the areas covered in the survey have the following error margins at 95 percent confidence level: ± 5.7 percent for Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.