Millions of people in the devoutly Catholic Philippines believe God is punishing humans for their evil deeds by inflicting environmental catastrophes on them, a survey published yesterday showed.

Twenty-one per cent of people believe God is unleashing his wrath with landslides, typhoons and other disasters that regularly hit the country, according to the survey carried out by polling group Pulse Asia.

More than 80 per cent of the nation’s 92 million people are Catholic, a legacy of its Spanish colonial past.

But the number of people attributing the disasters to God’s wrath is declining, from 23 per cent in a similar survey carried out two years ago, amid a growing sense that humans themselves are directly to blame.

Sixty-three per cent of Filipinos blamed humans and climate change for environmental catastrophes, up from 54 per cent two years ago, Pulse Asia said.

The survey, of 1,200 people across the country last month, also found that Filipinos were becoming increasingly worried about climate change.