With Reference to Environmental Geographies, Why Is It Important to Think Global and Act Local?

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Think global and act local is a term often used with reference to environmental changes. The fundamental concept of thinking globally and acting locally is to encourage people and communities to take impulsive actions that would result in increased sustainability and prevent further environmental degradation. Environmental degradation, as suggested by Jones (2012), is based on a pre-established human assessment of what a given environment must look like. The gravity of environmental changes and effectiveness of thinking globally and acting in preventing such change are the factors, which make this method essential. Waste management, for instance, is construed as a local environmental problem plaguing the society at present. Eden (2005) accentuates that unlike other issues such as climate change, it does not attract much media attention or international debate. In spite of that, she emphasises the need to treat it as a global problem due to the dangers of current waste management systems involving contamination of land as a result of landfills. Combating such an issue, which is prevalent in various countries, requires simple local methods. Eden suggests mitigation in order to reduce the problem by reducing the production of waste material in households and also adapting ourselves, individually, to deal with waste management more effectively. Another possible solution is to follow the practise of recycling locally, as is being done in Mali with the additional benefit of employment and revenue generation. Besides waste management, environmental problems such as climate change and ozone depletion, which are already accepted as serious global issues also, require local action to be solved. However, till today local officials see these as international issues, which should be addressed by national and world leaders (Kennel 2013). Nevertheless, local action is
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