Throughout the history of environmental social work, studies like Cacel B. Germain’s “An Ecological Perspective in Casework Practice” (1973), with its emphasis on “person in environment,” have regularly broken new ground.
Still, environmental social work has lagged in acceptance by the social work profession overall, says Dr. Amy Krings, associate professor at the Ohio State University College of Social Work, who is a co-lead of the environmental Grand Challenge—“Creating Social Responses to a Changing Environment”—so building a larger research infrastructure has been vital.
Adds Dr. John Mathias, associate professor at the Florida State University College of Social Work and also a co-lead of the environmental Grand Challenge, “A lot of the research going on in environmental social work is multidisciplinary, collaborative work where the focus is on the social justice, community engagement and human impact components of various environmental issues.”
Following are recent samples from the burgeoning research in environmental social work:
- “Climate Change, Social Work, and the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: A Scoping Review” by Lisa Reyes Mason, Colleen Cummings Melton, Darian Gray and Andrea Lynn Swallow
- “Co-Creating a ‘Sustainable New Normal’ for Social Work and Beyond: Embracing an Ecosocial Worldview” by Meredith Powers, Michaela Rinkel and Praveen Kumar
- “Ecosocial Work and Social Change in Community Practice” by Komalsingh Rambaree, Meredith C. F. Powers
and Richard J. Smith
- “Environmental Social Work in the Disciplinary Literature, 1991-2015” by Amy Krings, Bryan G Victor, John Mathias and Brian E. Perron
- “Indigenous Perspectives for Strengthening Social Responses to Global Environmental Changes: A Response to the Social Work Grand Challenge on Environmental Change” by Shanondora Billiot, Ramona Beltrán, Danica Brown, Felicia M. Mitchell and Angela Fernandez
- “Utilizing Photovoice to Support Indigenous Accounts of Environmental Change and Injustice” by Felicia M. Mitchell, Shanondora Billiot and Stephanie Lechuga-Peña