Abstract
After reviewing and publishing numerous short essays (brief notes and voices from practice) on social work responses to the pandemic of COVID-19, we have reflected on the challenges and opportunities during this centennial crisis. We are proud of our professional peers who are working with communities during very difficult times all around the world. At the same time, we may have to confess that we have mainly focused our eyes and minds on the well-being of humans. We always say that social work put efforts on various levels: the intra-personal, interpersonal, person-in-environment (PIE), intra-organizational, inter-organizational, inter-generational, and international. However, we pay a lot less attention to the sustainability of our natural environment.
Connecting people is one of the long-standing missions of social work practice. However, our vision should also cover our home and habitat – the globe. It seems that the intervention of social work should also cover the linkages between nature and the people, and aim for a harmonious relationship between them. Fortunately, our international social work organizations, namely, International Federation of Social Workers, International Council on Social Welfare, and International Association of Schools of Social Work, have already put environmental social work as one of the top priorities in their Global Agenda (Jones and Truell, 2012).
In the previous year, a literature review article by Krings et al. (2020) was selected as the Best Paper for Frank Turner Price. A systematic review of 497 peer-reviewed articles, it identified the following 10 topics:
Animals, human–animal, human–environmental, or human–nonhuman relationships;
Climate change, global warming, or environmental degradation;
Conservation or access to nature, wildlife, or green spaces;
Ecospirituality or ecocentric values;
Food (in)security or food (in)justice;
Industrial pollution, toxins, or environmental hazards;
Natural disasters or environmental crises;
Natural resources including land, water, and fossil fuels;
Sustainable development, technologies, or policies, macro-level interventions;
Sustainable practices (e.g. individual-level interventions such as reducing environmental footprint, recycling) (Krings et al., 2020: 279).
We think that this operationalization provides a cornerstone for defining and discussing the future for environmental social work. We now have to be aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is not only a signal, but also a stern warning about global warming and over-globalization. We have to admit that we may be overusing or abusing natural resources. We do not only need to be humanistic, but we also need to be humble to nature. We have to understand that we are living in the natural environment in which resources are limited and should be cherished. Environmental social work will not only enrich the content of social work practice, but also extend its boundaries.