Climate change is the reality of our everyday life. With its power and influence it surpasses the sphere of natural and steps into sphere of social and in this way connects two seemingly separate spheres. In the world, the interest for climate change and the awareness of the urgency for action, especially at policy level, is worryingly insufficient despite the fact that individuals, activists, different groups and climate movement have been warning us for decades about the urgent need for action. With the unlimited use of fossil fuels, poisoning of soil, water and the air, uncontrolled logging and in general living by the motto more is more we are digging ourselves a hole from which we will find it difficult to get out. Climate change has a human face, face of poverty and social inequalities, war and violence, exploitation and money, hunger and health, migrations and human rights. It almost seems like there is no topic that we cannot, in one way or another, connect to climate change. And exactly the complexity of climate change and its impact on people’s lives is the subject of my graduation thesis. Climate change does not affect all people equally, especially vulnerable are those groups that social workers collaborate with on every day basis. For this very reason social work needs to be involved in the debate on climate change, so that we can contribute to the solutions with our knowledge and experience. We cannot look for solutions only in green energy and different technologies, solutions and changes need to be social and systemic. Through my graduation thesis, I will explore the role of social work in the fight against climate change. I will compare the views of various authors and integrate them into a meaningful whole. At the beginning I will be focused on what climate change is and how it affects our lives. Then I will relate climate change to social inequalities, poverty, health, capitalism, human rights and wars. I will present what green social work is and how it stands for social justice. I will be interested in impacts of climate change on social work practice, also in time of natural disasters, and relations within it. The relation between social work and climate change is a fairly new, yet extremely important thematic area that will be affecting social work practice in the future.
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