Foreword
Meredith C. F. Powers

Introduction: Foundations of Ecosocial Work Practice
Rachel Forbes and Kelly Smith

Chapter 1: The Climate Crisis and Social Justice: An Overview for Social Workers
Karen Magruder and Stephen Edward McMillin

Chapter 2: Achieving Environmental Justice through Integrated Social Work Practice
Bronwyn Cross-Denny, Christina B. Gunther, Maura M. Rhodes, and Rui Liu

Chapter 3: Social Work Perspectives on Environmental Racism
Natalie Moore-Bembry, Christine Morales, and Mariann Bischoff

Chapter 4: Reparations as a Model for Ecosocial Work Practice
Kimberly S. Compton

Chapter 5: African Americans and Exposure to Environmental Toxins: A Solutions-Focused Approach
Jodi K. Hall and Bernadette C. Vereen

Chapter 6: The Air We Breathe: Carbon and Other Pollutants
Ande Nesmith

Chapter 7: Grassroots Blueprint: How Housing Is Constructed in Ecosocial Work
Tiffany Adamson, Carrie Jankowski, and Rachel McBride

Chapter 8: Social Work Application Model for Environmental Justice
Mariann Bischoff and Christine Morales

Chapter 9: Socially Engaged Art and Environmental Justice: Social Worker as Artivist
Meri Stiles

Chapter 10: Feminist Participatory Action Research: A Methodology for Ecosocial Justice
Naomi Joy Godden, Trimita Chakma, and Kavita Naidu

Chapter 11: Critical Ecofeminism Praxis: The Effects of Water Carrying and Climate Change Adaptation on Nepali Women’s Reproductive Health
Bonita B. Sharma and Dorlisa J. Minnick

Chapter 12: Impacts of Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on Mental Health
Claire Luce, Bailey Fullwiler, and Leah Prussia

Chapter 13: Juxtaposition of Disability and Ecosocial Work: Implications and Challenges
Aarti Jagannathan, Adil Hakkim, and Patricia Welch Saleeby

Chapter 14: Lived Perspectives on the Changing Natural Environment: Voices of Older Detroiters
Evan Villeneuve, Tam E. Perry, Ventra Asana, Fatima Hazimeh, and Brenda Faye Butler

Chapter 15: Ecosocial Work Policy and Advocacy Practice
Georgianna Lynn Dolan-Reilly and Patricia Welch Saleeby

Chapter 16: Forced to Flee Home: An Innovative, Community-Based, and Salutogenic Model to Address the Consequences of Displacement for Refugees
Amy E. Stein

Chapter 17: Interdisciplinary Collaboration to Engage Students in Community-Based Learning and Environmental Justice: A Case Study in an Urban Setting
Eydie Dyke-Shypulski and Amy Dykstra

Chapter 18: Teaching Place for Social Work Practice
Cindy Sousa, Susan P. Kemp, and Bree Akesson

Afterword
Anne C. Deepak, Evelyn P. Tomaszewski, Sebastian Cordoba, and Shenae Osborn

Acknowledgments
Rachel Forbes and Kelly Smith

Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors

Rachel Forbes, MSW, is an associate professor of the practice of social work and the Western Colorado MSW program director at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. She is an appointed member of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Commission on Educational Policy, the inaugural cochair of the CSWE Committee on Environmental Justice, and a former member of CSWE’s Council on Global, Learning and Practice. Rachel was the taskforce cochair for the CSWE Curricular Guide for Environmental Justice (2020) and is coauthor of the book The Intersection of Environmental Justice, Climate Change, Community and the Ecology of Life (2021). Rachel is an elected member of the Colorado Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers Board of Directors. She has taught coursework on sustainability, ecological justice, culture and place-based equity, and fostering sustainable behavior across undergraduate and graduate programs for over 10 years. Rachel’s current research and teaching looks at the impacts of climate change on mental health and ecological justice social work practice. Her work has been published in Environmental Justice and has been funded by the CSWE Katherine A. Kendall Institute for International Social Work. Rachel lives in Glenwood Springs, Colorado where she advocates for environmental justice in mountain communities across Colorado’s Western Slope.

Kelly Smith, DSW, is the founder and director of the Institute for Social Work and Ecological Justice, developing programs that build social workers’ capacity to confront environmental and social justice challenges related to climate change. Kelly teaches for Columbia School of Social Work and Adelphi University School of Social Work and is a member of the Grand Challenge for Creating Social Responses to a Changing Environment Advisory Council. Her research explores the inclusion of environmental and ecological justice content in social work curricula in relation to the disparate impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on communities with concentrated systemic disadvantages. Kelly employs a multisolving approach to climate and social justice issues. Her work in continuing education bridges gaps across social work practice and supports innovations that address pervasive inequities and systems of oppression. Kelly earned her doctorate in social work from the University of Southern California, where she was honored with The Order of Arete. She also holds a master’s degree in Gender and Social Policy from the London School of Economics. Kelly lives with her family on Long Island, serving on her community’s Environmental Advisory Board.

Tiffany Adamson, MSW, LCSW, is the director of field education and clinical assistant professor for the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma. She has devoted much of her professional career to preparing social work students as they enter into the profession. Her clinical work has primarily focused on adult mental health and wellness, which led to a continued interest in the impacts of housing and environmental issues on well-being.

Bree Akesson, PhD, is the Canada Research chair (tier II) in Global Adversity and Well-Being and an associate professor of social work at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her program of research ranges from micro-level understandings of the experiences of war-affected families to macro-level initiatives to strengthen global social service systems.

Ventra Asana, DMin, is an ecotheologian and urban environmentalist who advocates for restoring nature spaces as the site of divine Earth care. Ordained as both a deacon in the United Methodist Church and an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Churches, Ventra, now retired, created and led numerous community outreach programs in ecological ministries over 20 years in Michigan and Illinois.

Mariann Bischoff, MS, MSW, LCSW, is an assistant professor and field education coordinator at Rutgers University. Along with her spiritual practice of interbeing in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, Mariann knows the Earth as a healing being and applies to social work the formal analytical disciplines from her previous careers in engineering and international agriculture.

Brenda Faye Butler, aka Coal Miner’s Daughter, a Chandler Park resident in Detroit, Michigan, has dedicated her life to improving the lives of Birminghamians (in Alabama), Detroiters, and New Yorkers on her journey as a community advocate, addressing inequalities in America through the lenses of labor, health, governmental politics, environmental justice (climate change), and more.

Trimita Chakma is a feminist activist/researcher from the Chakma Indigenous community in Bangladesh. She has worked with hundreds of grassroots activists from the Global South, training them to use feminist participatory action research (FPAR) for social justice. She is a cofounder of the online feminist pedagogical platform FPAR Academy.

Kimberly S. Compton, PhD, MSW, is a practitioner, researcher, and educator, blurring professional lines between her practice experiences working with refugees and urban farms, her research investigating environmental justice advocacy using a critical race lens, and her role as a professor of social work, incorporating environmental social work in curriculum and community.

Sebastian Cordoba, BSW (Hons), PhD, is a social worker, policy advocate, researcher, and academic at RMIT University Australia with a passion for social and environmental justice. He is a United Nations Asia Pacific Representative for the International Federation of Social Workers and a policy advisor on climate change for the Australian Association of Social Workers.

Bronwyn Cross-Denny, PhD, LCSW, is an associate professor and author of Integrated Social Work Practice: Bridging Micro, Mezzo, and Macro Level Practice (Cognella). She has extensive clinical expertise with youth and families of diverse backgrounds, and her scholarship covers diversity, social justice, social determinants of health, and global health.

Anne C. Deepak, PhD, is an associate professor at Monmouth University School of Social Work. She has served as an International Federation of Social Workers representative to the United Nations. Her scholarship and teaching include focuses on postcolonial feminist social work, climate justice, global and community practice, and antiracism.

Georgianna Lynn Dolan-Reilly, LMSW, brings history as a researcher, editor, writer, social media coordinator, adjunct professor, and community development specialist to their environmental justice work. Their focus is on policy, community work, and health promotion and disease prevention. Georgianna is working toward a social welfare PhD from Sacred Heart University.

Eydie Dyke-Shypulski, DMin, MSW, LICSW, is the chair of the Department of Social Work and MSW program director at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Eydie and her husband, Michael, enjoy skiing, dogsledding, and paddling in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota.

Amy B. Dykstra, PhD, is a professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Bethel University. She teaches introductory-level biology courses as well as an upper-level plant taxonomy and ecology course. She studies the ecology and evolution of Echinacea angustifolia, a plant native to the tall-grass prairies of North America.

Bailey Fullwiler, MSSW, LSW, is a community social worker and independent ecological grief consultant. As a consultant, she works with environmental groups to navigate ecoanxiety, ecological grief, and burnout through strategic planning, collective care initiatives, and education. In addition, Bailey is a trauma- responsive 200 registered yoga teacher who teaches yoga for resilience in halfway houses throughout Ohio.

Naomi Joy Godden, PhD, BA, BSW, is a vice-chancellor’s research fellow at the Centre for People, Place, and Planet at Edith Cowan University in Bunbury, Australia. She is an ecosocial worker, feminist climate justice activist, and feminist participatory action researcher.

Christina B. Gunther, EdD, is an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Health Sciences at Sacred Heart University. Christina’s focus is on global health with expertise in bias and racism in healthcare, social determinants of health, social justice in community healthcare access and outcomes, and health equity.

Adil Hakkim, PhD, is a PhD research scholar with the Department of Psychiatric Social Work and a psychiatric social worker with the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India. His areas of interest include nature and mental health, sustainable living, yoga and spirituality, and psychosocial rehabilitation of persons with mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Jodi K. Hall, EdD, MSW, is an associate professor of social work and a health disparities researcher. Her focus is interdisciplinary research that is translational to marginalized communities and groups. Her overarching goal is to conduct in-depth examinations of multifaceted health concerns by addressing the impact of the social environment.

Fatima Hazimeh is a graduate student at Wayne State University pursuing a career in pharmacy. She has a great interest in research and improving overall community health. She currently gives back to her community by being a part of many service events such as free medical clinics, winter hygiene drives, park clean-ups, and creating care packages for refugees.

Aarti Jagannathan, MA, MPhil, PhD, is an additional professor of psychiatric social work (Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services), and a mental health professional at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India. Her areas of interest include psychosocial rehabilitation of persons with mental disability through interventions such as supported education, supported employment, supported housing, facilitation of social welfare benefits, dance therapy, nature-based interventions, and yoga.

Carrie Jankowski, MSSW, LCSW, is a clinical assistant professor and field education coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work. She has worked with BASW and MSW students since 2014. Carrie’s social work clinical practice focused on healthcare and outpatient counseling, including individuals with special needs, children and families, and older adults.

Susan P. Kemp, PhD, MA, is professor of social work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and professor emerita at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching interests focus centrally on place, environment, and community in social work practice. She is also colead of the Grand Challenge for Social Work, Create Social Responses to a Changing Environment.

Rui Liu, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor of health sciences at Sacred Heart University. Her diverse research portfolio and research interests include aging, physical activity, environmental exposures, nutrition, global health, and mixed-methods research. Her teaching and curriculum development experience spans epidemiology, biostatistics, research methods, and geriatric wellness.

Claire Luce, PhD, MSW, is a researcher whose independent scholarship focuses on the grief and loss experienced as a result of climate change. She has a PhD in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University, an MSW from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and a BA in environmental studies from Franklin University Switzerland.

Karen Magruder, LCSW-S, is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas at Arlington where she created an Environmental Justice & Green Social Work course. She holds a certificate in climate change and health from Yale University and is a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Rachel McBride, MSW, LCSW, is a field education coordinator at the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma. She has a BS in psychology from the University of Tulsa and an MSW from the University of Missouri. Rachel is a licensed clinical social worker, with most of her clinical experience in child and adolescent mental health.

Stephen Edward McMillin, PhD, studies innovation and entrepreneurship to mitigate the health impacts of climate change and air pollution in support of integral ecology, a holistic approach to environment, society, politics, and economics. His primary approach is social innovation, investigating how harnessing technology, education, design, and evidence-based practice promotes health and well-being.

Dorlisa J. Minnick, PhD, MSW, is a social work scholar activist and an affiliate scholar with the Center for Land Use and Sustainability, which promotes the advancement to create social responses to a changing environment, one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, by utilizing critical frameworks and community cultural knowledge.

Natalie Moore-Bembry, EdD, MA, MSW, LCSW, earned her MSW at Monmouth University and doctorate of education at Rowan University. She is an experienced educator and trainer and currently serves as director of student affairs at the School of Social Work, Rutgers University. Her research interests include cultural humility and self-awareness, racism and oppression, environmental justice, and community organizing.

Christine Morales, MSW, LCSW, earned an MSW from the University of Southern California. She is currently a doctoral student at Rutgers University School of Education and an assistant professor at Rutgers, where she teaches social work students. Born and raised near an incinerator and sacrifice zones, Christine promotes environmental justice.

Kavita Naidu is an international human rights lawyer and activist from Fiji specializing in feminist climate justice for grassroots women in all their diversity in Asia and the Pacific. Kavita is engaged in regional and international spaces amplifying feminist climate demands, decolonial and feminist global Green New Deal, and feminist participatory action research.

Ande Nesmith, PhD, LISW, is School of Social Work director and professor at the University of St. Thomas. She researches environmental justice in social work practice and education, developing tools to promote an ecocentric perspective that prioritizes all life. She serves on the Council on Social Work Education’s Committee for Environmental Justice and Commission on Global Social Work Education.

Shenae Osborn is an International Federation of Social Workers representative to the United Nations, a coauthor and coeditor of multiple international works, as well as a psychotherapist in New York City. As an international award winner for her research and work on psychological abuse, Shenae strives to create awareness of unseen abuses and help her clients empower themselves through realizing their strengths.

Tam E. Perry, PhD, is an associate professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work. Her research addresses urban aging from a life course perspective, focusing on how underserved older adults navigate their social and built environments in times of instability and change. She is codirector of the National Institutes of Health–funded Community Liaison and Recruitment Core of the Michigan Center for African American Aging Research.

Meredith C. F. Powers, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her applied scholarship includes climate justice, climate migration, ecosocial worldviews, and ecotherapy. She is the founding director of the Climate Justice Program of the International Federation of Social Workers and of the Green/EcoSocial Work Collaborative Network.

Leah Prussia, DSW, LICSW, is a self-described tree-hugging dirt-worshipper. They focus on fostering mind/body and personal/planetary relationships. Leah blends teachings from Anishinaabe elders, nature, somatic experiencing, and relational-cultural theory in their clinical work addressing natural connections. Leah is an associate professor at the College of St. Scholastica.

Maura Rhodes, LCSW, MSW, MS, is clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Sacred Heart University. She was the founding director of the Field Office during the MSW program development. She has extensive practice experience working with adults who are homeless and leadership expertise in program development, quality improvement, and accreditation.

Patricia Welch Saleeby, PhD, MSSA, is the social work program director at Bradley University. Her scholarship focuses on the use of the capability approach and the international classification of functioning, disability, and health system in disability policy and practice. She serves on the Council on Social Work Education board, and she was a member of the Environmental Justice Competency Task Force.

Bonita B. Sharma, PhD, MSSW, is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Texas at San Antonio, College for Health, Community, and Policy. Her research uses feminist perspectives to understand place-based socioeconomic and environmental as well as climate change–related issues impacting women’s health, empowerment, and well-being in the global context.

Cindy Sousa, PhD, MSW, MPH, is an associate professor of social work at Bryn Mawr College. Informed by postcolonial, feminist, and critical race theories, her work examines the health implications of violence, particularly for mothers; protective effects of culture, place, and social support; and professional responsibility in the face of collective suffering.

Amy E. Stein, PhD, MSW, LCSW, has a PhD in social work and social research from Bryn Mawr College, an MSW from Rutgers University, and a BA in psychology from the College of New Jersey. She is a full-time lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in the School of Social Policy & Practice.

Meri Stiles, PhD, MSW, is associate professor of social work and artivist/curator for the Social Justice Art Gallery at Daemen University. Her research focuses on secondhand harms of substance use among college students. Meri is a working artist making art reflecting on nature, interdependence, and social justice.

Evelyn P. Tomaszewski, MSW, is an assistant professor and MSW program director at George Mason University. As a public health social worker, she has research interests that include HIV/AIDS syndemics, global human rights policy practice, and training the social services workforce. She is an International Federation of Social Workers, United Nations commissioner and chair, Global Alliance Mental Health Task Force.

Bernadette Vereen, BA, LCSWA, was raised in Durham, North Carolina. She received her BA in psychology from Elon University and MSW from North Carolina State University. Bernadette is a trained doula and active birth worker. She currently works as the perinatal social worker for Duke University’s Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Department.

Evan Villeneuve, MSW, is a social work practitioner of 11 years specializing in housing advocacy, community organizing, social services, and public policy. He holds an MSW from the University of Michigan and currently serves his community as a program manager at CLEARCorps Detroit, a community-based nonprofit focused on healthy homes initiatives

Ecosocial Work Practice is a must-read book. It argues passionately that social workers are significant players in the ecosocial domain. This message draws on the insights of those working from the deep ecology movement and green social work paradigm, with 18 stimulating chapters that cover materials ranging from mental health issues to working with refugees, all from an ecosocial perspective. This book also highlights the importance of social justice, human rights, and antioppressive values in responding to the diverse experiences of those who are survivors of various environmental disasters. It is clearly written and flowing, so social work students and busy practitioners should be able to follow it without difficulty. It should be on the reading list of every social work curriculum.

Lena Dominelli
Professor and chair of social work
Director of Programme on Disaster Interventions and Humanitarian Aid
University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom

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Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy is a pioneering book in social work literature that all social workers will want to read. This book is innovative in that it successfully combines our profession’s beginning and continuing focus on social justice with the broader perspective of environmental justice. In the beginning days of social work when we first worked in settlement houses, we became very aware of the negative effects of economic poverty and thus became advocates for social justice. Over the years we expanded our concerns to fight for BIPOC, LGBTQ, and gender justice. While our mantra has always been person in environment, we first only thought about the environment as a client’s family and community. Now we have expanded our understanding of the environment to include the larger world. And, as always, we have become aware of those who are most disadvantaged in the expanded environment and strive to promote justice for them. Using an ecosocial lens, this book very ably explores social work’s promotion of environmental justice with diverse client groups in different fields of practice.

Elaine Congress, DSW, MA, MSSW, LCSW
Associate dean and professor
Graduate School of Social Service
Fordham University
New York City

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Chapter 3 defines the concept of environmental racism, by deconstructing and examining the multiple tenets that encompass our understanding of this urgent social work issue in the 21st century. The authors guide the readers in a review of three major components that describe how environmental racism develops: institutionalized environmental racism, personally mediated environmental racism, and internalized environmental racism. The inclusion of specific social work interventions to address environmental racism constitutes a remarkable contribution to be incorporated at the macro, mezzo, and micro levels of practice. The authors discuss several recommendations for social workers to engage in personal and social action to enact antiracist environmental protection.

Chapter 16 examines the conceptualizations and existing research on salutogenic and place attachment models and their use by social workers intervening with refugees and migrants. These models respond to the need to attend mental health distress and lived experiences of trauma by Burmese and other ethnic refugees. Amy E. Stein provides relevant information on global forced migration and the precarious living circumstances of those fleeing home and becoming geopolitically displaced. This chapter introduces the reader to the uprooted–rerooted–planted model as a novel combination of existing models of community gardens and natural setting interventions. This intervention model
is supported by empowerment and cultural competency social work strategies to help refugees experiencing traumatic stress, exacerbated by feelings of being out of place and not belonging to their new resettlement. The incorporation of salutogenesis practices in community settings such as community gardens has been extremely successful in reducing traumatic stress and promoting posttraumatic growth in refugees’ enclaves.

Yolanda Machado-Escudero, PhD, MSW
Assistant professor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL

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Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy is engaging, informative, and comprehensive, linking environmental and social justice with climate change. Forbes and Smith elicited chapters that are timely, inclusive, and well organized. The authors highlight and delve into complex intersecting issues while identifying oppression along with hope. Chapters engage in critical analysis of risk cutting across poverty, geography, and intersections of diversity, bringing to light the many lessons we can learn from Indigenous cultures and Black and Brown communities. Each chapter provides roadways to change through the use of models and case studies emphasizing the multiple, intersecting dimensions of environmental and climate degradation while providing us with possibilities for change. It is a read that flows with each chapter expanding our vision so that we see the multidimensionality of what we are facing through voices from the local to the global inclusive of advocacy, community,
and place.

Cathryne L. Schmitz, PhD, MSW
Professor emerita
University of North Carolina Greensboro
Greensboro, NC

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Documented by Puku’i, the Hawaiian ‘Ōlelo No’eau reads: He ali‘i ka ‘āina, he kauwā ke kanaka [The land is a chief, humans are her servant]. As a Native Hawaiian in social work, I am acutely aware that despite the increasingly tangible consequences of climate change, those most impacted by deviations in the environment – namely Indigenous peoples and other communities of color – still routinely face invisibility within discourses on the symbiosis between the environment and one’s health. The essays within Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy lay essential groundwork that invites us to envision a world that cherishes the environment as a fundamental factor in antiracist, effective, indigenized, and collective wellness. Through exquisite writing and expert research, the reader is invited to partake in the drawing of an essential celestial map for the future of ecosocial work. In sum, Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy offers a beautifully salient synopsis of how the health and well-being of underserved communities relies closely on the practice of environmentally conscious social work.

Michael S. Spencer, PhD
Ballmer endowed dean
School of Social Work
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

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Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy is a timely contribution to the field of social work. Given the environmental extremes we are experiencing, social work is primed to be on the frontlines of environmental work. This text provides valuable guidance as to how we can navigate these challenges with a justice lens and use tangible solutions.

Regardt (Reggie) J. Ferreira, PhD
Director, associate professor
Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy
School of Social Work
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA

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