The IFSW Climate Justice Program is for anyone and everyone – social workers, friends, family, colleagues, companies, universities, etc. Please help us share it widely!
The IFSW Climate Justice Program aims to:
- Educate—ourselves and others
- Advocate—for changes in policies and practices
- Be the Change We Wish to See in the World—by reducing our harmful impacts that lead to climate injustices and supporting projects that create local solutions in communities most impacted by climate injustice.
What is climate justice?
The climate crisis is directly connected to human activities and not merely due to normal patterns of nature. For example, people and ecosystems have endured water, land, and air contamination from industrial pollution and toxic agricultural practices, soil erosion, desertification, and species and habitat loss due to extensive deforestation, and an increase in frequency and intensity of disastrous weather patterns, such as typhoons.
While the climate crisis impacts all of us, those who are marginalized or oppressed are experiencing it to an even greater extent, creating climate injustice for people and our planet. Much of the burden of unsustainable consumption patterns has fallen disproportionately on the most vulnerable people in the world, who typically have the smallest consumption patterns. In addition, these vulnerable people receive fewer of the benefits of the environmental resources. These collective patterns of unsustainable consumption contribute to the climate crisis, making it a global justice issue for people and the planet, this is known as climate injustice.
How are we responsible?
It is important in our global profession that we find ways to connect with each other in order to build solidarity, share critical research findings, ideas, and resources, and to network for collaborative solutions to the issues we are charged to address as a profession (e.g., IFSW events). However, we must also be mindful of how our travel, to make such connections, impacts the climate and contributes to the injustices for the planet and the people we aim to serve.
How can I become part of the IFSW Climate Justice Program?
We invite you to become part of the solution — to learn more, to educate others, to advocate for change, and join with the IFSW Climate Justice Program to create immediate change for climate justice. You can explore this website for resources and tips and use our ecological footprint calculator to explore the carbon emissions associated with your travel. Then, based on the ecological footprint calculator, make a contribution to support the various, active climate justice projects around the world that are featured and supported by the IFSW Climate Justice Program. You can also share your ideas with us at
How can I make a contribution?
It is increasingly becoming a practice to voluntarily donate money to redress harmful impacts we create with our ecological footprint, this is commonly known as “carbon offset”. While there are reasonable advantages to this, there is also some debate over the effectiveness. That is why IFSW has established the Climate Justice Program as an alternative program.* Rather than merely attempting to capture the carbon from our ecological footprints, the IFSW Climate Justice Program will promote ways to reduce our harmful impacts that lead to climate injustices and raise donations to directly support projects that create local solutions in communities most impacted by climate injustice. By using the ecological footprint travel calculator provided here on the IFSW website, you can compute a suggested donation amount that you could contribute to support climate justice projects around the world. Feel free to donate less or more, according to your own personal needs. And, invite others to contribute as well. If you have work colleagues, or family members who travel, encourage them to use the IFSW Climate Justice Program to learn more and to be part of the change. You can select which of the active projects you would like your contribution to go to, or select that it be spread evenly among all active projects. Finally, we don’t intend for this to be a quick fix for our guilt, so we can continue doing business as usual, rather, we want to encourage mindfulness and degrowth of our ecological footprints and intentional and immediate action for climate justice.
In order to make a contribution, please click the button below:
Contribute
* It is critical to note that the IFSW Climate Justice Program is quite different than that of big businesses trying to buy land rights from governments or Indigenous groups, which permits them to basically pay to pollute, violate Indigenous human rights, and threaten Indigenous sovereignty. We reject this notion of carbon offsetting and are in full support of fighting those companies and that type of “carbon-offset” program. In fact, the IFSW Climate Justice Program will endeavor to support Indigenous groups’ projects which fight for climate justice against such companies.