Green social work has been significant in introducing new issues into environmental debates and increasing its centrality to social work practice. These have included: the mainstreaming of environmental considerations; a widening of the theoretical and practice base to ensure that social and environmental justice are considered integral to any environmental involvement by social workers; highlighting the need to think of innovative approaches to socio-economic development; and making disaster interventions core elements in the social work repertoire of knowledge, skills, capacity building and curriculum formulation. This paper considers the challenges of China’s rapid industrialisation and its implications for rural people migrating into cities, the urban populations that receive them and environmental degradation. It introduces the idea of green social work and discusses the implications of green social work for social development in China in the context of environmental crises precipitated by the country’s rapid economic development.

綠色社會工作將環境的新議題引進到社會工作專業並增加其在社會工作實踐的重要性。這些影響包括﹕將環境議題納入主流，使自然環境深嵌於生態視角和專業關注中﹔擴大理論與實踐的基礎，以確保社會與環境正義在任何社會工作者參與的環境（廣義）相關實踐中被重視﹔強調思考社會經濟發展的創新方法，使之在滿足人類需要的同時，不至於”以消耗地球作為代價”﹔將災害干預的元素加入到社會工作的知識、技能、能力建設和課程編制。 我們在本文中，思考中國在快速工業化時所面對的挑戰，以及其對農民工、城市居民和環境惡化的影響。我們介紹綠色社會工作的理念，並解釋環境議題在廿一世紀對社會工作專業的挑戰。之後，我們將用實踐的例子探討綠色社會工作在快速經濟發展而產生的環境危機時對中國社會發展的意義。

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