ABSTRACT
Green social work (GSW) is a transdisciplinary, holistic approach to environmental crises that has challenged the social work profession to incorporate its principles, values and concern over environmental degradation, and the disasters associated with this into daily, routine, mainstream practice. Addressing environmental concerns allows social workers to adopt a number of diverse roles ranging from being coordinators of practical assistance to developing community and individual resilience in responding to disasters throughout the disaster cycle – prevention, preparedness, immediate relief, recovery, and reconstruction. This chapter describes the beginnings of GSW, its theoretical framework and value-base for practice, and its commitment to social change, including at the policy level, especially as it concerns the elimination of poverty and equitable distribution of resources from the local to the global. Community-based disaster risk reduction and sustainable development is high on the policy agenda of the United Nations International Strategy on Disaster Reduction.
