Can social workers be agents of change in global development agendas?

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development seeks global transformation through poverty alleviation, social and economic development, and environmental sustainability, with its success measured in terms of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). While social development sought to harmonise economic and social development, the SDGs brought sustainable development and poverty alleviation into a single frame, highlighting environmental sustainability within contemporary global agendas (Gray, 2020; Gray et al., 2017). With their explicit focus on human development, development policies have long prioritised economic growth over social and environmental justice. With their anthropocentric priorities, human wellbeing has become central to the normative visions of sustainable development and environmental justice (Bullard, 2011). However, for Cox-Shrader (2011: 270), 'the transition to sustainability is a transition to a worldview grounded in ecological justice'. Living in harmony with the environment has long been a central tenet of Indigenous cosmologies, where sustainability is 'about harmony, relationships and rhythms … not an accounting exercise for rationing how we use the planet's resources' (Bullard, 2011: 142). Thus, sustainable development and ecological justice bring social and economic development into line with age-old Indigenous ecological perspectives.

Sustainable development's intransigent focus on development

Sustainable development calls for a return to comprehensive development, which was lost in the narrow focus on poverty alleviation in the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) (Correll, 2008). It emphasises the connection between sustainability and environmental awareness, protection, and conservation, as well as issues of economic growth, social development, and poverty alleviation. However, its dismal progress toward environmental sustainability relates to its intransigent focus on development (Sachs, 1999). Thus, for Luke (2005), sustainable development is neither sustainable nor development, while for Bullard (2011: 141) it made little sense when there was 'so little left to sustain'. For Sneddon et al. (2006), fathoming what constituted development was even more difficult. Bullard (2011: 141) agreed: Perhaps the greatest challenge we face is not so much about how we understand sustainability, but rather how we understand development. When we consider the state of the world and the routine failure of 'development' to feed, house, clothe, educate and care for the invisible majority, the word no longer has any moral or even practical content.

Acero's (2011: 205) view of development as 'equitable and sustainable growth … [and the] expansion of human capacities' makes its success all the more unlikely, since this rests on transforming all forms of discrimination and increasing 'women's political participation' (Acero, 2011: 207). As Banuri (2013: 209) observed, sustainable development is 'difficult to operationalize … without an underlying political consensus over equity', while Sneddon et al. (2006) perceived a lack of political will to pursue development models that would guarantee the invisible majority a decent quality of life, address inequalities, and lessen environmental degradation. As long as economic development trumped environmental sustainability, sustainable development - in policy discourse and development practice - would remain a myth.

SDGs and environmental sustainability

With sustainability as a generic principle, the SDGs remained development goals, though, unlike the MDGs, some were primarily about ecological rather than human wellbeing and offered a glimpse of what sustainable development might look like conceived as environmentalism rather than developmentalism. However, like the MDGs, the SDGs have failed to overcome implementation challenges (IFSW, 2021). What was the point of adding inclusive goals on the environment, peace, and equality, when corporate-driven globalisation and modernising development were perpetuating poverty, inequality, and exclusion? How would the SDGs further global partnerships, when they failed to articulate how governments, nongovernment organisations, and international institutions with mandates to enact sustainable development would challenge the destructive ideological and economic powers of global corporations? While they heralded greater attention to sustainability, the systems underpinning global exchanges continued to emphasise economic development. Further, without international consensus on, and substantial action to address, the serious issues of climate change and environmental degradation, disappointing progress toward environmental targets would likely continue under the SDGs. As Banuri (2013: 208) noted, neoliberalism sought to jettison social protection, while sustainable development sought 'to protect human welfare' through integrated development. The former assessed development and poverty alleviation in terms of economic outcomes, while the latter used human development indicators to determine outcomes for human wellbeing (UNDP, 2014), rather than environmental degradation as an unavoidable consequence of human progress.

Ongoing tensions between the various aspects of sustainable development sustained the myth that economic development and environmental sustainability were mutually exclusive. The focus on economic growth put all nations and people on the same path to development, when underdevelopment was a problem of those with less not more. Notwithstanding the shift to poverty reduction with the MDGs, and environmental sustainability with the SDGs, the focus on economic growth as the key to prosperity persisted, despite history's lessons to the contrary of gross inequality, with millions of people mired in poverty worldwide. Further, the lack of progress on environmental sustainability resulted from the failure of development as economic growth, applied universally through foreign aid and development policy, to the detriment of local cultures, knowledge, and environments. Economic development could not solve the interconnected problems of poverty, ill health, illiteracy, maldistribution of wealth, low social development, and ecological injustice, the solution to which lay in concerted local, national, and international action. The continual externalisation of ecological issues demonstrated the absence of political will to take determined decisions and make firm commitments to lessen environmental degradation and reduce climate change and their accompanying social problems.

What can social workers do?

Social work has embraced social and sustainable development, yet few social work education programs include discussions of international social work and sustainable development, with northern programs unikely to learn about social work in the Global South, while, ironically, southern programs largely use northern literature. Few programs offer critical analyses of the enormous influence of international financial institutions and nongovernment organisations on national and regional development in the Global South, or interrogate the relationship between development, foreign aid, and poverty alleviation. The tripartite relationship between these three domains hinges on how each is conceptualised and defined, and shifts in understanding of exactly what each seeks to accomplish. Gray (2017) argued that understanding the meaning of development - and social work's role in, and contribution to, social and sustainable development - required an exploration of the discourses shaping approaches to development. With their value-driven approach and emancipatory claims, social workers champion the rights of vulnerable and oppressed people and acknowledge the need to work toward poverty alleviation, without serious consideration of how they do this from the service infrastructure within which they are embedded and its binding social policies. As Matthies (2012: 248) observed, social work is not 'an autonomous and self-organized profession', as its global agenda seems to suggest. The goals of poverty alleviation, environmental justice, and social development are far removed from daily employer and service-user expectations.

Rather than study sustainanable development goals within their broader context, or set realistic expectations within the parameters of what most social workers do, and are required to do, social work tends to take a normative stance. This, too, is how it approaches issues of environmental sustainability and ecological justice. The problem with this normative stance is it leaves little room for serious debate and critique, as it pursues the cause with missionary zeal rather than scholarly enquiry. Areas of environmental and climate change science are hotly debated and by no means conclusive. In books, conferences, and on electronic discussion lists, there is an element of preaching to the converted and a great deal of within-group encouragement and promotion such that a climate change denier would be a pariah. There are people with left- and right-wing leanings within social work, yet its discourse carries a largely leftist, emancipatory ethos. There is a need to be deeply critical of social work's stance and to deconstruct initiatives to open the door for discussions on an ecocentric foundation that prioritises environmental justice in approaching inequality, poverty reduction, and sustainable development. For change to take place, social workers of diverse political persuasions need to be involved in the discussion. Concerns about the environment need to move from the margins to the mainstream, bearing in mind that, as Matthies (2012: 248) observed, 'in many countries, social workers themselves are part of, and dependent on, the unsustainable neoliberal industrial model and its power structures'.

'Designed to strengthen the profile of social work' (Jones & Truell, 2012: 454, emphasis added), the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development exemplifies the kind of solidarity, rather than constructive critical debate, that dominates the profession. It is a political vehicle to establish social work's development credentials, despite several key international bodies already occupying this space, including from within social work, such as the International Consortium on Social Development (Gray & Webb, 2014). Dominelli (2014: 339) reiterated social work's aims to protect 'the physical environment', adding an environmental justice string to the Global Agenda's bow. However, she saw this as contingent on holding multinational companies accountable for exploiting land, labour, and resources to maximise profits. Her presentation of green social work as a grassroots movement that takes place through macro-level community development seems far removed from challenging multinationals and the realities of daily practice for most direct-pratice social workers (Dewane, 2013). Those pushing for a renewed ecological perspective signal the need for a new paradigm and a move away the modernist one underpinning social work. The question, however, is how can 'social workers … paid to work in public or private services in the current economic model … change into mobilizing people towards the collective problem-solving of environmental conflicts and economic injustice?' (Matthies, 2012: 248) Bearing in mind the political nature of the discourse on sustainable social development and environmental social work, contributors in Gray (2017) wrote repeated accounts of how they were trying to embed developmental social work in Africa, while being hampered by legislative environments, where social workers lacked a collective voice, a political platform, and professional legitimacy.

In conclusion, while poverty and inequality remain, social work is highly unlikely to place environmental sustainability above social justice. The best social work can do is learn from practice by documenting what social workers are doing to further sustainable development and environmental justice, cognisant that most social workers are not engaged in such work and social workers are small players in this terrain. We should avoid over-ambitious claims of social work's contribution and instead seek to establish the effectiveness of what social workers are doing. Already, social work's goals are wide-ranging and its practice so diverse that it is difficult to articulate exactly what it is that social workers do. This is possibly one reason why social workers around the world feel their work goes unrecognised and the profession lacks the respect not only of politicians but also of local communities and service users of all ilk. Social work offers a unique perspective that needs to be better articulated, not only to policy makers and fellow professionals, but also to local communities and service users. By demonstrating the effectiveness of their interventions, social workers around the world will earn the recognition for the good that they do to further social and ecological justice.

References

Acero, L. (2011). Pathways towards sustainability, participatory human development and the state. Development, 54, 205-208. Banuri, T. (2013). Sustainable development is the new economic paradigm. Development, 56, 208-217. Bullard, N. (2011). It's too late for sustainability: What we need is system change. Development, 54, 141-142. Correll, D. (2008). The politics of poverty and social development. International Social Work, 51, 453-466. Cox-Shrader K (2011) Notes on the transition: Globalization, (re)localization, and ecological justice. Developmet, 54, 265-267. Dewane, C. (2013). Review of Lena Dominelli (2012) Green social work: From environmental crises to environmental justice. International Journal of Social Welfare, 22, 328-330. Dominelli, L. (2014). Promoting environmental justice through green social work practice: A key challenge for practitioners and educators. International Social Work, 57, 338-345. Gray, M. (Ed.). (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Social Work and Social Development in Africa. London: Routledge. Gray, M., & Webb, S. A. (2014). The making of a civil society politics in social work: Myth and misrepresentation in the global agenda. International Social Work, 57, 346-359 Gray, M., Coates, J., & Davies, K. (2017). Social development, the environment and the future of the planet. In J. Midgley & M. Pawar (Eds), Future directions in social development (pp. 141-163). London: Palgrave. International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). (2021). Social work and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). Retrieved from ifsw.org Jones, D., & Truell, R. (2012). The global agenda for social work and social development: A place to link together and be effective in a globalized world. International Social Work, 55, 454-72. Luke, T. W. (2005). Neither sustainable nor development: Reconsidering sustainability in development. Sustainable Development, 13, 228-238 Matthies, A-L. (2012). Review of Lena Dominelli (2012). Green social work: From environmental crises to environmental justice. International Social Work, 56, 247-248. Sachs, W. (1999). Planet dialectics: Explorations in environment and development. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Sneddon, C., Howarth, R., & Norgaard, R. (2006). Sustainable development in a post-Brundtland world. Ecological Economics, 57, 253- 268. United Nations (UN). (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2014). Human Development Report 2014 - Sustaining human progress: Reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience. New York: UNDP.