<p>There seems to be a consensus in the world that the climate is changing, bringing unpredictable and severe consequences for both humans and nature. The feld of social work is known for helping misfortunate individuals and groups, and is said to deal with people in their environments. Yet there seems to be a lack of giving these environments meaning as also something natural. This thesis has the purpose of exploring the connection between social work and the physical environment made by research literature, using the methodology of literature review. The questions asked is in which ways the physical environment can be connected to human welfare; if so, what implications are there for the feld of social work, and fnally how can the discussion be understood using a typology over environmental sustainability presented by Andrew Dobson. Through the concept of sustainable development, recent research about climate change and Dobsons typology, the study's main literature review tries to answer these questions, fnding that there is indeed a connection between nature and human wellbeing that gives serious thought to what the theory base and practice of social work in the future should embrace. Concluding that social work too long, perhaps because of its roots in individualism and productivism, has ignored the natural environment, and that this has to change now, the thesis then tries to develop a concept of ecosocial welfare to help us understand were we're headed and how we'll get there.</p>

There seems to be a consensus in the world that the climate is changing, bringing unpredictable and severe consequences for both humans and nature. The feld of social work is known for helping misfortunate individuals and groups, and is said to deal with people in their environments. Yet there seems to be a lack of giving these environments meaning as also something natural. This thesis has the purpose of exploring the connection between social work and the physical environment made by research literature, using the methodology of literature review. The questions asked is in which ways the physical environment can be connected to human welfare; if so, what implications are there for the feld of social work, and fnally how can the discussion be understood using a typology over environmental sustainability presented by Andrew Dobson. Through the concept of sustainable development, recent research about climate change and Dobsons typology, the study's main literature review tries to answer these questions, fnding that there is indeed a connection between nature and human wellbeing that gives serious thought to what the theory base and practice of social work in the future should embrace. Concluding that social work too long, perhaps because of its roots in individualism and productivism, has ignored the natural environment, and that this has to change now, the thesis then tries to develop a concept of ecosocial welfare to help us understand were we're headed and how we'll get there.