ABSTRACT
Temperature and sea level rises, extreme weather events, food and water insecurity and loss of biodiversity are gaining notoriety in popular and social media, with the evidence of their presence all around us. Associated impacts can be seen not only in the physical worlds with droughts, rising seas, wild weather and extreme temperatures, but also in the social and economic world. Secondary impacts (Butler and Harley, 2010) on food and water security and human health (Adlong and Dietsch, 2014; McMichael, 2013; Franchini and Mannucci, 2015; Friel, 2010) will affect not only governments, corporate profits and the economy but also job security for communities across the world. The changing climate will bring with it both risks and opportunities. It seems that the threat of disaster as a consequence of climate change offers an opportunity to develop a socially just, culturally respectful and sustainable world with indigenous wisdom paving the way. According to Teixeira and Krings:
The communities most affected by environmental injustices are often the same communities where social workers are entrenched in service provision at the individual, family, and community level.
(2015: 1) People with limited financial resources are often victims of discrimination, inequity and potentially most vulnerable to the impacts of an unsustainable world. These groups often have established relationships with both statutory and non-government agencies and particularly social workers (Drolet and Sampson, 2014; Gray and Coates, 2015; Grise-Owens, Miller, and Owens, 2014). They will also be further disadvantaged by the impacts of climate change (Lawler, 2011; New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine, 2013). Paradoxically, some of these groups have incredible resilience and resourcefulness demonstrated in a range of creative solutions, movements and communities across the globe that offer alternative approaches to living outside of the mainstream (Tigger-Ross et al., 2015). Social work, being the only profession with social justice embedded in its definition needs to creatively offer support in building resilience and adaptation to impacts of climate change and globalisation (Appleby et al., 2015).