Scholarly understanding of an individual’s climate change risk perception in the African context, is limited, including amongst those who have an influence on policy making. This discussion paper goes some way towards filling this gap in understanding by providing preliminary findings on concern and the psychological distance of climate change amongst policy influencers in three southern African cities (Blantyre, Harare and Gaborone). We posit that climate change is psychologically close amongst those consulted in each city and this is correlated with increased levels of concern. As psychological distance of climate change has been shown to be an indicator of willingness to act on climate change, we posit that willingness to act on climate change may be enhanced in these southern African cities and, indeed, in many African cities facing similar risks from climate change. This information should be used to nuance the way in which we engage in tackling the climate change challenge in urban Africa, recognising the potential receptiveness to act on climate change and the contextual need for concrete, solutions-based climate information.

在非洲背景下，学者对个人对气候变化风险感知的了解有限，包括那些对政策制定有影响的人。这篇讨论文件通过提供有关南部非洲三个城市（布兰太尔，哈拉雷和哈博罗内）政策影响者之间对气候变化的关注和心理距离的初步发现，为填补这一理解空白提供了某种途径。我们认为，在每个城市咨询的人群中，气候变化在心理上是接近的，并且这与关注度的提高相关。由于气候变化的心理距离已被证明是愿意对气候变化采取行动的指标，因此我们认为，在这些南部非洲城市中，应对气候变化采取行动的意愿可能会增强，并且事实上，许多非洲城市面临着气候变化带来的类似风险。这些信息应被用来细化我们应对非洲城市气候变化挑战的方式，认识到对气候变化采取行动的潜在接受度以及对具体的，基于解决方案的气候信息的背景需求。