Thinking globally and acting locally : climate change and environmental health practice - a discussion paper

The interactions between social and environmental sustainability at the local and global scales, and between the two scales, are complex and difficult to evaluate. Yet this is the very field in which environmental health practitioners have their day-to-day practice. Nowhere is this complexity more apparent than in responding to the effects of global climate change. This review of the context in which these practitioners must deal with the issues concludes that there is discontinuity between decision making within globalisation-from-above (the national and supra-national scale) and globalisation-from-below (the sum of the local responses worldwide). To address issues of global governance such as climate change in any effective manner, globalisation-from- above needs sustainable regulatory mechanisms, and the links between globalisation from above and below need to be established or reinforced. Meanwhile, environmental health practitioners get on with the job, building on local knowledge of place, collaborative networks and cooperative alliances.