Scale Julie Sze If thereis any phrase that represents both environmental problems and the call to action in the last three decades, it’s the injunction to "Think Global-Act Local.” On the most basic level, this approach connects thinking and acting. For many, this slogan effectively connects individual action with collective impacts or change. Less obvious, but no less important, thinking globally and acting locally also demands that people more fully comprehend the relationship between the local and the global or, in other words, that they consider scale. Scale “maps” onto the fundamental political, envi- ronmental, and social problems that have preoccupied environmental activists and scholars over the last three decades. These are primarily as follows: the intersection of the local and the global spheres; intensifying urban- ization and pollution around the world, but particu- larly in the Global South and Asia; and the increasing awareness of environmental pollution on individuals and communities in many locales. Significant environ- ‘mental problems, from biodiversity conservation to air and water pollution and habitat degradation, require interdisciplinary analysis and methods with which to analyze complex processes at multiple temporal and spatial scales (Sayre 2005, 277). “Scale” is a—or possibly the—key term in geography. Scale is first a technical measurement of the ratio be- tween the size of objects in the world and their size on a map (.e., a cartographic scale of one to one mil- lion). Scale functions as a shorthand for an areal unit on a map, or for what geographers call an, “analy scale,” as well as a “phenomenon scale,” which is size at which geographic structures exist ang of which geographic processes exist in the world ag tello 2008). Physical geographers refer to a Hy a tion scale” in Geographic Information Systems (aig and remote sensing research (Marston 2000), Cult and political geographers generally focus on sca} le the levels of the bodily, urban, regional, national, global (Herod 2011); while still others focus on local gender, or household scales (Marston 3000), Pottigy ecologists and radical geographers generally agree thay objectively but is also socially constructed (Marsig 2000), historically contingent, and poli tested (although scholars disagree about the mecha nisms and the role of the state, capital, and labo MacLeavy and Harrison 2010). These debates about scale have political and analytic implications in term of how best to define or research a problem and, on: more pragmatic level, how to craft policy responses to these problems as a consequence. 4 Ecologists and geographers use scale in overlapping yet distinctive ways. Ecological scale consists of both, agree that there is no single correct scale for ecological research; that cross-scalar and interdisciplinary analysis is necessary for ecological investigation; that ecological change is historical; and that scale raises metaphysical, epistemological, and ontological issues (Sayre 2005). Ecologists focus on grain and extent, where “grain” re- fers to the smallest unit of measurement employed to study some phenomenon while “extent” denotes the ‘overall dimensions over which observations are made, including both space (area) and time (duration) in given study area (Sayre 2010).ape interplay between space and time is also what yes “scale” a key analytic term for humanists and itl and artists engage pollution across space and time | critics, Environmental activists, writers, crit- vag imagination and cultural ideas. Shewry writes «(spatial arrangements are made in everyday prac- jeesamong people and other life and are tapped into oader Processes such as time, imperialism, global eonom, ecolOy, evorution and memory” (LeMenager, shewty, and Hiltner 2011, 105 italics added), Imagina- sion isa Key resource in responding to environmental oblems since “literature commonly layers environ- mpental spaces with memories and seek(s}to dream up ‘other worlds” (LeMenager, Shewry, and Hiltner 2011, 10). ‘Moving from the ways in which particular academic disciplines and fields define and use “scale,” the ques- tion remains, why has scale become so prominent? Why ‘now? In part, the emphasis on scale is a result of the un- derstanding that environmental problems often “cross” or jump scales, and there is a “spatial mismatch” that can occur in discussions of an environmental problem, as between the scales of environmental pollution and its political regulation. For example, Hilda Kurtz, in dis- cussing a dispute over a toxic facility in Louisiana, ar- ques that environmental injustice is, in part, a result of scalar ambiguity and that scales are also concepts that shape regulation as well as cultural frames of inclusion and exclusion (2003). In this case, a very localized dis- pute in a predominantly African American neighbor hood was connected to the state regulatory agencies. In addition, local activists succeeded in connecting their struggle with a broader social movement for environ- mental justice within a federal regulatory context. In this same region, other local social-justice-movement actors similarly leveraged ctoss-scalar analysis (ie., the Norco community in Louisiana made references to “Mother Earth,” testified at ‘The Hague, and stood in sol- Idarity with the Ogoni in Nigeria, because both lands were polluted by Shell, a multinational oil corporation). ‘Thus, environmental and other social movements (la- or) also organize and network across scales, using com. munication technologies that transcend space and that marshal sophisticated understandings of local, regional, national, and global relationships (Marston 2000; Pel- low 2007). Asa result, multiscalar analysis is not just a meth- odological imperative but also a political one in envi- ronmental studies, One cultural scholar argues that “attention to scale leads us to deeply powerful forms of territorial organization that impact the environment in uneven ways” (emphases added, LeMenager, Shewry, and Hiltner 2017). A multiscalar lens allows for a deeper political, cultural, and historical analysis across space and time. Yet another illustration of an environmental prob- Jem with scalar dimensions is the elevated pollution in Arctic Native populations as a result of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are a set of extremely toxic, long-lasting, chlorinated, organic chemicals that can travel long distances from their emissions source (often created through industrial pollution thousands of miles away) and that bioaccumulate in animals and ecosystems. In the 1980s, scientists observed high levels of toxic chemicals (pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, industrial chemicals, and waste combustion) far from their sites of production, A Nunavik midwife in the Arctic collected breast-milk samples as a control from a ” environment, but instead, researchers were sur- prised to find that Arctic indigenous women had POP concentrations in their breast milk five to ten times higher than did women in southern Canada and among the highest ever recorded (health effects include higher rates of infectious diseases and immune dysfunction,as Well as negative effects on neurobehavioral develop- md height). This problem of Arctic Native breast milk contamination thus has local effects, created in global economic-political and scientific ecological con- texts (Downie and Fenge 2003). A multiscalay analysis Js necessary to fully comprehend the concentrated lo- cal effects of Arctic Native POP pollution in its histori- caf, spatial, scientific, and potitical dimensions. Native activists testified at international meetings about their case, to fully illustrate the relationship between the local Arctic realities and global historical and political injustices and the disproportionate impact of this rela tionship on indigenous bod Scale as an increasingly prominent analytic tool is intimately connected to intensifying conditions of glo- alization, specifically capitalist economic development and related ideologies of neoliberatism, privatization, and deregulation, Scale and globalization are linked in part because of the way the increasing movement of pollution and peoples and the concomitant weakness of environmental regulation (at multiple scales) are connected. The failures to address climate change are auguably linked to analytic problems related to scale, Yor example, a significant percentage of industrial pol- Jution in China is a result of production for consum- ers in the United States, Europe, and Australia, but this Pollution crosses the Pacific, landing in the western United States. How should this pollution be measured? In national terms? Global? Pacific Rim? Sayre suggests that the difficulties In confronting global warming are a function of the unique scalar qualities of climate change, including the temporal realm. He writes, “Tem- Porally, the graiv is likewise infinitesimal: that split sec- ‘ond at which a chemical reaction occurs in combustion, photosynthesis, oxidation, decay, etc, But the extent is very long: once a molecule of carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide enters the atmosphere, it remains there for more ie than a century; most other greenhouse gases one-to-several decades” (Sayre 2010; italics agg tions such as China and India also use tempor sions in their political arguments against interaa treaties to regulate carbon emissions, Pointing oy nomic development. Scilar analysis is spatially and temporally g ‘and thus offers useful analyte lenses through ‘o approach a wide range of environmental tong the case of scale, “believing the world to be sea likely to shape how we engage with itand so they of knowledge about its materiality that we pro (Herod 2011, 257). As long as complex environ '$ are multiscalar across space and time, problem will remain a key conceptual too! in interdisciplin environmental studies.