The 'profound social justice crisis’ of climate change makes it our business

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) it’s “unequivocal” that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. 

Human-induced climate change is already affecting weather and climate extremes in every region of the world. 

NASA warns human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed the Earth’s surface and ocean basins, highlighting rising temperatures, shrinking ice sheets, retreating glaciers, sea-level rise and more frequent extreme weather. 

The American space agency also notes multiple peer-reviewed studies show 97 per cent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree recent climate-warming trends are likely due to human activities.

This observation matters because if climate change is treated as a debate between equally valid opinions, social work risks responding too weakly to a crisis that is already harming the people and communities most exposed to poverty, insecure housing, ill health, racism, displacement and political marginalisation. 

Our starting point, therefore, must be climate crisis is real, it is human-caused, and it is already producing social consequences.

Homes have already been lost, crops have already failed, people have been displaced, and lives have been put at risk by extreme heat, floods, droughts and food insecurity.

The intersection of social work and climate justice

Climate change is not merely an environmental issue. It is a profound social justice crisis that exposes and intensifies the inequalities social work exists to challenge. 

The Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles places social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversity at the centre of the profession, requiring practitioners to challenge discrimination, institutional oppression, unjust policies and unjust practices.

In this context, climate justice is not an optional specialism; it is part of social work’s ethical mandate.

Eco-social work, sometimes described as green or ecological social work, offers the framework for this. It recognises that human wellbeing is inseparable from the health of the natural and built environment. 

Housing, food, water, air quality, energy security, biodiversity and climate stability are not background conditions; they are active determinants of safety, health and dignity.

If social work is committed to protecting people in their social context, it must also take seriously the ecological context that makes life possible.

Funded by BASW, I attended the IFSW Europe Regional Conference 2025 in Oslo, held under the theme ‘Bridging Communities: Building Sustainable Futures’. The conference focused on green and eco-social work, climate change, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Indigenous perspectives. 

It was probably the point where I became, in the most professionally defensible and mildly humorous sense, “radicalised”. After hearing so much evidence about climate breakdown, global vulnerability, food systems and the ethical contradictions in how we treat animals, silence began to feel less like politeness and more like avoidance.

The disproportionate burden on the most vulnerable

Globally, climate change acts as a risk multiplier. It does not create inequality from nothing; it deepens the harms produced by colonial histories, poverty, debt, structural racism, gender inequality and unequal access to land, healthcare and political power.

The IPCC reports that existing vulnerabilities and inequalities intensify with the adverse impacts of climate change, and that mortality from floods, droughts and storms is far higher in vulnerable regions than in less vulnerable ones.

This unequal burden is especially clear in the Global South. Communities in regions such as the Sahel face desertification, water stress and pressures on pastoral and agricultural livelihoods, while Bangladesh remains highly exposed to flooding, cyclones and sea-level rise. 

These countries and communities have contributed far less to historic greenhouse gas emissions than industrialised nations, yet they experience some of the most acute consequences. 

Climate injustice is therefore not only about weather; it is about who caused the crisis, who profits from the systems behind it, and who is left to absorb the damage.

Climate displacement and migration are part of this global picture. Environmental degradation, crop failure, resource scarcity and conflict can make places increasingly unlivable, forcing people to move within and across borders. 

Social workers are already involved in supporting displaced communities, asylum seekers and migrants whose experiences are shaped by overlapping forces: climate stress, poverty, violence, trauma and hostile immigration systems. 

Climate migration should therefore be understood as a safeguarding, mental health, housing and human rights issue.

The impacts are also gendered and generational. In impoverished regions, women and children are often more exposed to food and water scarcity because of caring responsibilities, unequal access to resources and heightened risks during displacement. 

When climate shocks disrupt education, income and community protection, risks of exploitation, gender-based violence, child labour and interrupted schooling can increase. 

A climate justice approach therefore asks not only what is happening to the planet, but whose bodies, futures and choices are being placed at greatest risk.

How the global crisis affects the UK

As the summer of 2026 is showing in abundance, the climate crisis is not distant from UK social work practice. 

It is already reshaping housing, health, income, care and community resilience. A simple pathway illustrates the pressure: extreme weather events create housing and infrastructure strain, which then intensifies health and social care crises. 

Flooding  destroys homes and disrupt services; heatwaves endanger older adults, people with long-term conditions and those with mobility issues; and poor-quality housing  makes both heat and cold more dangerous.

Fuel and food poverty connect the global crisis to everyday practice. Climate shocks disrupt harvests, energy markets and supply chains, contributing to price rises that are felt most sharply by families already living close to crisis. 

In the UK, this means parents skipping meals, households unable to heat homes safely, disabled people facing higher energy costs, and voluntary services carrying the burden of emergency food and fuel support.

Extreme weather also requires social workers to think more seriously about disaster response. 

More severe summer heatwaves and the increased risk of flooding create new safeguarding risks for older people, children, people experiencing homelessness and those without secure transport, insurance or informal support. 

Emergency planning, community containment, welfare checks, trauma-informed support and rights-based recovery are becoming increasingly relevant to both statutory and voluntary practice.

Extending social work values to animals

To respond fully to the climate crisis, social work may need to move beyond strict anthropocentrism: the assumption that only human interests matter morally. 

A Post-humanist or One Health perspective recognises that human health, animal health and ecosystem health are interconnected. This does not mean treating humans and animals as identical. 

It means acknowledging that the exploitation of animals, the destruction of ecosystems and the vulnerability of human communities are often produced by the same systems of extraction, domination and inequality.

The interconnectedness of vulnerability is already visible in social work practice. Domestic abuse research shows that perpetrators may harm or threaten companion animals as a tactic of coercive control, using the bond between a victim-survivor and an animal to intimidate, punish or prevent escape. Ignoring animals in assessment can therefore mean missing important indicators of risk and support.

Expanding the ethic of care also brings food systems back into the argument. Industrial animal agriculture contributes to deforestation, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions and conditions that can heighten disease risk. 

And yet, a global shift towards plant-based diets could reduce agricultural land use by around 75 per cent, largely because less land would be needed for grazing and growing feed crops. 

This does not make individual diet the only solution, but it does show that animal agriculture is not environmentally incidental. It is structurally significant.

There are practical implications. Holistic family assessments should consider companion animals as part of the household ecology: sources of emotional support, barriers to fleeing abuse, possible targets of harm, and indicators of family functioning. 

Safety planning should ask whether animals are at risk and whether pet-inclusive accommodation, fostering or temporary care is needed. This is not a distraction from human safeguarding; it can strengthen it.

Eating animals and moral consistency

Eating animals should not be treated as a neutral personal preference when it sits inside wider systems of climate harm, food inequality and avoidable suffering.

And it is not about attacking individuals. Food choices are shaped by family, poverty, culture, disability, health, access, trauma, religion and habit. But social work values invite us to examine power and vulnerability. 

As human beings, we hold extraordinary power over other animals: we breed them, confine them, separate them from offspring, control their movement and decide the conditions of their deaths. 

If social work teaches that power should be scrutinised when it is used over vulnerable groups, then our relationship with animals cannot be dismissed simply because it is familiar.

From evidence to responsibility

The evidence does not dictate a single lifestyle for every person, nor does it suggest that individual choices alone can solve structural crises. 

But it does challenge the idea that climate change, food systems and animal ethics are separate from social work. Climate science shows that the crisis is real and human-caused. 

Social justice evidence shows that the poorest and most vulnerable are hit hardest. UK evidence shows that environmental harm follows lines of poverty, race, housing and health inequality. Practice evidence shows that animals can be part of risk, resilience and coercive control within families.

Food systems sharpen this responsibility. There is already enough food in the world to feed the global population, yet hunger persists because access is shaped by poverty, conflict, affordability, waste and distribution. 

At the same time, significant land and crops are used to feed animals rather than humans directly, making animal agriculture a resource-intensive system at a time of escalating climate and food insecurity. 

The earlier ethical point therefore returns with more force: if eating animals is not nutritionally necessary for most adults, and if animal agriculture contributes to climate harm, land pressure and food-system inefficiency, then continuing without reflection is difficult to justify.

For social work, the challenge is not perfection but consistency. If the profession is committed to dignity, justice, care and challenging oppression, then it must be willing to examine the ecological and ethical systems that shape human suffering. 

Eco-social work calls practitioners to connect the local with the global, the human with the more-than-human, and immediate care with long-term planetary responsibility.

Andrew Gambrill is a social work teacher delivering training up and down the country following a 30 year career in frontline social work in a variety of settings