Global Environmentally Informed Social Work Interventions: A Scoping Review

Background and Purpose:

Climate change represents an intensifying global crisis that necessitates a transformative response across all sectors of society. While social work literature in response to the global climate crisis is growing, much of it focuses on calls to action rather than on tangible practice interventions. Practice interventions are often shaped by distinct socio-political histories, unique environmental vulnerabilities, and the specific structures of national welfare systems. To explore environmentally informed social work interventions across diverse geopolitical contexts, this scoping review seeks to synthesize the current landscape of the field by asking: what is known in the social work literature about the extent and nature of environmentally informed social work interventions globally?

Methods:

Scoping review methodology following the structure of Arksey and O’Malley (2005) was used to explore the extent and nature of environmental social work interventions globally over a 10-year period. We searched the peer-reviewed literature in the databases Social Work Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts and Social Sciences Citation Index applying the inclusion criteria (1) published on or since 1 January 2015; and before January 1, 2026 (2) social work literature (3) discusses a social work intervention informed by the natural environment.

Results:

After screening 208 articles, 32 met the inclusion criteria, representing 29 practice interventions. Most studies were conducted in Australia (n=9), the United States (n=8), and Canada (n=5), with fewer from Europe (n=10) and Asia (n=5), and minimal representation from Latin America (n=1) and Africa (2). The most frequent practice types were “Post-Disaster Social Work,” “Eco-Social Work Education,” followed by “Nature-based Therapy.” "Community Organizing," “Social Economy," and “Prevention Programs” are the least frequently mentioned.

Conclusions and Implications:

The findings indicate a strong concentration of documented practice interventions in the Global North, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of environmentally informed social work intervention development occurring in the Global South. This work aims to support the social work profession in learning from how environmental social work is applied globally, fostering social work interventions that build on a global understanding of context-specific actions, needs, and challenges to confront the unfolding and increasingly interconnected climate crisis, while also providing social work practitioners with tangible social work interventions.