As the climate emergency continues to reshape our world, every profession must grapple with its role in fostering a more sustainable and equitable future. For social pedagogy, this means critically re-examining how we can integrate an eco-social perspective into our practice.

The International Journal of Social Pedagogy is excited to announce a special series titled ‘Towards an Eco-Social Pedagogy’ that seeks to explore how social pedagogy can respond to the interconnected crises of environmental degradation and social inequality.

An Eco-Social Pedagogy

Social pedagogy is traditionally centred on fostering well-being, social inclusion and active citizenship through relationship-based educational approaches. However, the escalating impact of climate change presents significant challenges to this mission. Environmental injustices – from air and water pollution to extreme weather events – disproportionately affect disadvantaged individuals and communities, exacerbating existing social inequalities.

Here, it is argued that the climate emergency has two important implications for the field of social pedagogy – as well as related fields across the human professions.

Firstly, social pedagogy must develop a multi-faceted understanding of how it can combat environmental degradation through an eco-social justice perspective, recognising that environmental justice and social justice are intricately linked. It can do so by drawing on explorations in fields such as planetary pedagogy, green social work and eco-social work, eco-justice pedagogy, ecosystemic wellbeing, nature pedagogy, and outdoor education, to name just a few. It can also learn from community-based initiatives that might not seem directly connected but draw on shared principles, such as community gardens, city farms and environmental arts.

Secondly, climate change is likely to require new forms of social pedagogical support aimed at helping individuals and communities deal with climate-related issues, such as environmental disasters. As a field, social pedagogy can outline meaningful educative ways in which this support can strengthen people’s political agency and engagement as active citizens in environmental issues and other ways to support climate action, including by drawing on the creative arts to explore and highlight the impact of environmental issues and using nature as a medium for our own richer understanding of life aspects, such as interconnectedness, symbiosis, and the complex ways in which we shape – and are shaped by – our environment.

Social pedagogy is focussed on human relationships and this special series seeks to assert that this should extend to human relationships with nature. We need to understand that the human rights of both present and future generations require our urgent concern with environmental rights and protecting natural resources, ecosystems and biodiversity. It is our belief is that social pedagogy can make a valuable contribution towards this most critical social issue of our times. It also builds on the brilliant work by the International Federation of Social Workers in articulating eco-social justice as part of the People’s Charter for an Eco-Social World.

As we navigate the urgent challenges of climate change and social inequality, the integration of an eco-social perspective into social pedagogy is not just necessary – it is imperative. By embracing an approach that acknowledges our interconnectedness with the natural world and centres environmental justice within our practice, social pedagogy can contribute meaningfully to a more sustainable and equitable future.

This special series of the International Journal of Social Pedagogy will provide a vital platform for exploring these ideas, fostering dialogue, and shaping new pathways for research and practice.

Have a paper you would like to submit to the journal? Get in touch!

The International Journal of Social Pedagogy is a diamond open access, peer-reviewed journal that reflects the cross-cultural perspectives of a wide range of social pedagogical traditions and provide a deepening disciplinary understanding of social pedagogy itself.

Email us at admin@internationaljournalofsocialpedagogy.com.

IJSP Social pedagogy Climate emergency Environment Eco-social pedagogy