IELTS essay - Environmental problems are too big for individual countries and individual persons to address. In other words, we have reached the stage where the only way to protect the environment is at an international level. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

Climate change is a phenomenon affecting all people in all walks of life, from individual citizens to whole countries and huge multinational companies. Therefore, I disagree with the notion that the only way to address the environmental problems is at international level. I firmly believe that this colossal problem can only be handled if all individuals contribute; all governments take steps at national level and also join hands at an international level.

Many steps can be taken at the national and international level. By imposing restrictions on emissions and by strictly monitoring waste disposal from factories, plants and businesses, governments would go a long way towards preventing climate change. Furthermore, governments around the world should come up with solutions to help prevent imminent environmental disaster. The Kyoto Agreement in the 1990s tried to create international consensus to limit industrial emissions of gases. Many countries which are part of United Nations signed this agreement according to which they would not allow any industries to be set up which emitted more than 5.2% carbon dioxide.

Some people claim that individual action is irrelevant in the face of massive, wide-scale prevention policies set and controlled by governments. On the other hand, it is also a fact that individual action combined with governmental action can do a lot more to prevent climate change than if individual citizens were not involved. In a world of six billion people, if everyone stopped wasting water, disposed of their rubbish properly, started accepting recycled material and stopped succumbing to consumerism then it would go a long way in solving the problem of environment.

To put it in a nutshell, I pen down saying that individual citizens cannot sit back and say it is someone else’s responsibility to protect the environment; we must all play our part - individual citizens and governments at the national and international level.