Nowadays, as environmental issues become urgent, it is recommended that people take immediate action. Some individuals think that environmental problems should be solved internationally, while others believe they should be addressed at a national level. This essay will discuss both perspectives and explain why environmental problems the responsibility of individual nations should be.
On the one hand, people who think that environmental issues should better be solved on a national scale because of its convenient features. Nations understand their local situations the best and can take direct actions via laws and regulations, which largely promotes the productivity of tackling environmental concerns. For example, in cases like CO2 emissions due to the over usage of factories and cars, which unquestionably harms the environment and causes pollution, it could be controlled and strictly monitored via particular regulations. Also, since individual countries have direct access to national resources, fast actions could be implemented more easily. For example, a country could use educational resources to educate the citizens about environmental duties and how to fight against climate change, therefore raising public awareness. Such actions are likely achieved only when individual nations are responsible for environmental issues because they impact the country’s population.
On the other hand, opponents believe that environmental problems are better addressed at a global level because it is the duty of all human beings, and such collaboration could assist in developing new technologies in fighting against climate change and other concerns. However, putting environmental responsibilities at an international level not only does not contribute but potentially wastes a nation’s funds and resources, as most international cooperation so far only exists theoretically and on paper. Based on the status quo, although the WHO and UNO charter lists major problems to be fixed in the following decades, they lack guidance on direct actions that realistically address them. One of the examples of corruption in 2023 clearly states that the US government purposely used the shared fund of the UN to protect the environment on national defense and kept delaying the payment of future funds, showcasing the risk of working together worldwide.
To sum up, it is better that nations take the main role in solving environmental problems, as they could not find better and more effective solutions through international teamwork.