Title: Sustainability and social work

Authors: Vijayan K. Pillai; Rashmi Gupta

Addresses: School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington, 211 South Cooper Street, Arlington, Tx 76019, USA ' School of Social Work, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, HSS-Room 217, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

Abstract: Sustainability has been described as a synergistic outcome of a combination of ecologic sustainability, intergenerational equity and human development. Of the three components, human development and intergenerational equity are areas where social workers have done both practical and theoretical work for decades out of philosophical and professionals concerns for social inequality and poverty. Both social inequality and poverty are seen as the underlying causes of ecological degradation and poor intergenerational equity. In this paper we argue that social work as a discipline is conceptually rich to provide the design for sustainable thinking and action.

Keywords: sustainability; social work; social development; poverty; social inequality; sustainable development; intergenerational equity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSOC.2015.069910

International Journal of Sustainable Society, 2015 Vol.7 No.2, pp.140 - 150

Published online: 16 Jun 2015 *

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