Green social work for climate change

Abstract

Social work education in South Africa has been evolving in a positive direction in the last 28 years, with many universities opting to include social development content into social work curricula. With the development of the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997), many Departments or Schools of Social Work, across the country, attempted to move away from residual and curative approaches to social work, to developmental ones. This changed orientation could be attributed to the fact that the country’s social welfare policy is undergirded by the social development approach. In addition, the government’s adoption of the New Growth Path (NGP) Framework in 2010, aimed to enhance economic growth through, inter alia, developing the green economy. Furthermore, in 2011, South Africa approved the National Development Plan (NDP), which maps out South Africa’s steps to formulate and implement measures to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Despite these significant macro-policy shifts, which endorse the green economy and associated matters, there seems to be a dearth of climate change discourses in social work curricula. In view of the foregoing issues, this chapter discusses climate change and the role that social work should play in this arena, especially for a country such as South Africa, which relies heavily on fossil fuels to propel its economic growth. Considering social work’s social justice mission, it is imperative that social workers are prepared to practice competently in green social work in South Africa, where socio-economic inequalities abound. The chapter concludes its discussion by proffering a new pathway for green social work in South Africa.