Book Launch: "Promoting Community and Environmental Sustainability"

The third volume of "Social Work Promoting Community and Environmental Sustainability," a co-edited workbook series by Drs. Michaela Rinkel and Meredith Powers (UNCG Dept. of Social Work faculty and Sustainability Faculty Fellow), launched this week on Human Rights Day 2019! 

This excellent resource offers 17 chapters from social workers around the world demonstrating the many ways social workers are working for expanded, holistic rights for all, as we promote community and environmental sustainability! We hope you will join us in using this resource and sharing it with others.  Click here to download the book for free  

From the news release of the International Federation of Social Workers:

IFSW is thrilled, once again, to create a platform that highlights the important and inspiring work of social workers around the world who are taking up the Global Agenda as they promoting community and environmental sustainability. This is the third volume in the co-edited workbook series by Drs. Michaela Rinkel and Meredith Powers, and it features chapter contributions of 31 social workers from around the world. We have chosen to launch this book on Human Rights Day, 2019, as we recognize that we cannot have human rights without ecological rights.

Rinkel and Powers note: “Some understand human rights from a narrower, human-centered view as they focus on people’s rights to a safe, clean, and healthy environment to further the livelihoods, health, and well-being of our own species. We instead promote embracing of holistic rights with a broader understanding of ecological rights, within an ecosocial worldview (which acknowledges that humans are NOT the ‘top of the nature pyramid’, rather humans are nature; we are a part of a large and complex Web of Life). From this ecosocial worldview, ecological rights means establishing and ensuring the rights of all sentient and non-sentient beings, and the entire ecosystem; this is not merely for the benefit of humans, but in and of their own right to thrive and to maintain well-being. Focusing on ecological rights utilizes the type of long-term, systems thinking that a human-centric rights perspective has, at times, ignored. ” (from the Preface of Volume 3 by Rinkel and Powers, 2019)

Click here to download the book for free