Abstract: Submission #247

Abstract Environmental degradation and climate change are among the most pressing global challenges of our time, disproportionately affecting marginalised and low-income communities. Despite the growing urgency of environmental justice, dominant frameworks in social work education, such as Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (EST), have largely neglected the role of the natural environment in shaping human development and well-being. This theoretical omission limits the relevance of EST in addressing the complex interplay between social inequity and ecological harm, particularly in contexts where environmental hazards directly impact vulnerable populations. This urgency is underscored by recent climate-related disasters in South Africa, such as the devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, where entire communities lost homes and loved ones. These events not only exposed deep infrastructure and planning failures but also highlighted how environmental shocks intersect with poverty, historical inequality, and lack of state responsiveness, leaving families to cope with long-term trauma, displacement, and loss. This conceptual paper critically examines the limitations of traditional EST applications in addressing environmental degradation and climate injustice. We propose a reimagined ecological systems framework that explicitly incorporates environmental justice principles into each level of the theory- micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono, providing a more comprehensive tool for social work education and practice. Grounded in a conceptual desktop review of interdisciplinary literature in social work, environmental justice, and critical ecological theory, we argue that the exclusion of the natural environment from EST reflects a broader disciplinary blind spot. By integrating environmental justice into EST, we reposition social workers as key actors in addressing both social and ecological justice, particularly in the face of climate change. This reconceptualisation aligns with a transformative vision of social work that affirms the interconnectedness of human and environmental well-being.