RIYADH (BLOOMBERG) - Teenagers in oil-rich Russia and Saudi Arabia are slightly less worried about climate change being a global emergency than are adults, countering a trend among young citizens of Group of 20 (G-20) countries.

Russians and Saudis under 18 are, alongside Argentines, the G-20 teenagers less likely to see climate change as a threat, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released on Monday (Oct 25).

Less than 65 per cent of them consider climate change an emergency, compared with more than 85 per cent of teenagers in Britain and Italy.

"We relate this a lot to levels of education on the climate crisis," said Ms Cassie Flynn, UNDP strategic adviser on climate change and one of the report's authors.

Overall, seven in 10 teenagers in G-20 countries see climate change as an emergency, compared with 65 per cent of adults. At the same time, adults are more likely to want companies to pay for their pollution.

The United States and Australia registered the largest discrepancy between teenagers' and adults' views.

Three-quarters of Americans under 18 believe in a climate emergency, while only 65 per cent of adults do so. Australia also saw a 10 percentage-point difference, with 82 per cent of teens believing in a crisis.

"In places like the United States and Australia that have experienced extreme wildfires and extreme heat, these young people are looking at this and they're saying, 'Is this our new reality?'," Ms Flynn said in an interview.

Latin American adults are among the least concerned about climate change. While 64 per cent of Brazilians and 62 per cent of Mexicans see it as a global crisis, only 57 per cent of Argentines do - the lowest number among all G-20 adults.

UNDP polled almost 690,000 people in 18 countries in the bloc between October last year and June, though the survey omitted China and the European Union, whose governmental apparatus is also a G-20 member.