Social work, climate change and the Anthropocene

Abstract

The six-month period from January to June [2016] was the warmest half-year on NASA’s [North American Space Agency’s] global temperature record, with an average temperature that was 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century. This follows 2015, which was the warmest year on record and among the warmest decade on record. The ongoing warming trend – as well as the increasing frequency and severity of high-humidity heat waves – is ultimately driven by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Voiland, 2016) One of the most pressing problems confronting humanity is the threat posed by human-induced climate change. This is an issue that social work is only slowly starting to address. In some parts of the world, for example, India, Canada and Australia, social workers are engaged in forms of social work for environmental justice. This is occasionally grouped under the rubric of ‘green social work’ – an eclectic mix of ideas and practices derived from a range of concerns about human impact on the global environment and global ecology. The international definition of social work includes clear reference to the environment; yet, too often, this is interpreted unidirectionally as the impact of environments on people and their lives. It is increasingly clear that the impact of humans in their environment upon the planetary system is creating significant social problems that social workers will have to face in practice. As such, social work training and education programmes need to develop the professional knowledge base to consider and teach about climate change while developing and learning skills that could be fruitfully adapted to practice. This chapter engages with these important contemporary social work issues. We start by establishing the extent and roots of the crisis we face.