Creating Social Responses to a Changing Environment

Enhancing social work’s socioenvironmental impact is central to creating social responses to a changing environment, the Grand Challenge for Social Work detailed in this chapter. Worldwide, communities face unprecedented environmental change and degradation. Although climate change, extreme weather events, disasters, and other environmental challenges threaten the health, well-being, and survival of all people, their impacts fall most heavily on marginalized populations. Social work has a critical role to play in crafting social responses to these escalating threats. This chapter summarizes the activities of the Grand Challenge to Create Social Responses to a Changing Environment in five main areas: disaster preparedness and response, urban sustainability, community engagement, racial and gender equity, and capacity building within the profession. Looking forward, it emphasizes the importance of continued efforts to bring environmental change and injustice to the center of social work practice, research, and education—and to bring social work to the center of global efforts to mitigate and respond to escalating environmental challenges.