Describe an Environmental Problem in Your Area: Cue Card + Band-9 Answer (2026)
A Band-9 answer to the predicted 2026 'environmental problem' cue card with issue-analysis structure and green vocabulary.
Environment cards need senses plus systems — what you experience daily, and the mechanism behind it.
What you will be asked
Describe an environmental problem in your area.
You should say:
- what the problem is
- what causes it
- how it affects people
…and explain what could be done about it.
Your 60-second plan
Pick your most visible local problem — smog, plastic waste, water shortage. Note the problem in one sensory image, two causes, and one human effect you have witnessed. Image, causes, witness: complete.
Model answer (Band 8–9)
"The environmental problem defining my city is winter smog — a grey-yellow haze that settles every November and turns daylight into dusk. On bad days you can taste metal in the air, the sun is a dim coin, and the skyline simply vanishes behind a wall of particulate.
The causes stack cruelly. Crop burning in surrounding farmlands sends smoke drifting in; brick kilns and unfiltered factories add their share; and millions of aging vehicles idle in traffic that barely moves. Geography conspires too — cold air traps everything close to the ground, so the city marinates in its own exhaust for weeks.
The human cost is what radicalized me. My nephew developed a chronic cough every winter; his school now distributes masks like stationery. Outdoor laborers work through it unprotected. Last year my morning runs stopped entirely for two months — the air quality app showed numbers my doctor called 'cigarette-equivalent.'
What could be done is known, which makes inaction galling: subsidize happy-seeder machines so farmers need not burn stubble, enforce kiln zigzag conversion, expand metro lines to cut traffic. Other cities have done each of these. The barrier is coordination, not knowledge. Until then, we buy air purifiers — private solutions to a public failure — and wait for rain like a rescue."
Phrases examiners reward
- turns daylight into dusk — smog effect, dramatic
- dim coin — obscured sun image
- stack cruelly — causes accumulating (personified verb)
- marinates in exhaust — vivid saturation metaphor
- cigarette-equivalent — health comparison that lands
- private solutions to public failure — systemic critique close
Common questions
Why is this predicted for 2026?
Environment topics are evergreen in IELTS and this Part 2 card feeds directly into high-frequency Part 3 debates on development versus conservation.
Air, water, or waste?
Pick the problem you can smell, see, or hear. Sensory evidence makes abstract issues concrete and your answer vivid.