Areas of Social Work Practice II (Environment and Disaster Management): Causes and Consequences of Environmental Degradation, its Differential Impact, the Environment as a Human Right, Environmental Movements and Social Work; and Hazard, Risk, Vulnerability and Disaster, Forms and Impact of Disasters, Disaster Management Initiatives and Pre- and Post-Disaster Interventions

The Stockholm Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972) declared in its first principle that people have a fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being. The Rio Declaration (1992) placed human beings at the centre of sustainable development and set out principles such as precaution and "the polluter pays". The UN Human Rights Council in 2021 and the UN General Assembly in July 2022 recognised the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right. In India, the Supreme Court has read the right to a healthy environment into Article 21's right to life, beginning in cases such as Subhash Kumar (1991); in M. C. Mehta's oleum gas case (1987) it laid down the rule of absolute liability for hazardous industries; in Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum v Union of India (1996) it adopted the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle as part of Indian law; and in M. K. Ranjitsinh v Union of India (2024) it recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21. Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment, and Article 51A(g) makes it a fundamental duty of citizens.

India has a long history of environmental movements rooted in livelihoods. The Bishnoi community of Rajasthan is remembered for the sacrifice at Khejarli in 1730, when Amrita Devi and hundreds of others died protecting khejri trees. Chipko began in 1973 in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya, when villagers, led by the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal of Chandi Prasad Bhatt, hugged trees to stop commercial felling; in 1974 Gaura Devi led the women of Reni village, and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried the message widely. Appiko, launched in 1983 in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, carried the tree-hugging method south. The Silent Valley movement in Kerala, in which the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad played a leading role, stopped a hydroelectric project in a rainforest, and the area was declared a national park in 1984. The Narmada Bachao Andolan, active from 1985 and associated with Medha Patkar and Baba Amte, opposed the displacement caused by the Sardar Sarovar and other dams and raised questions about development itself. Other struggles include the movement against the Tehri dam, the Dongria Kondh's defence of the Niyamgiri hills against bauxite mining, the protest at Plachimada in Kerala against groundwater depletion by a cola bottling plant, and the fishworkers' movement against mechanised trawling. Internationally, Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement in Kenya won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Social work interventions in the management, protection and promotion of the environment include environmental education and awareness; organising communities to manage common resources, as in joint forest management (from 1990), water users' associations and watershed programmes; supporting communities to claim forest rights under the 2006 Act and to take part in public hearings on environmental clearances and social impact assessments; advocacy and support to environmental movements; rehabilitation and resettlement work with displaced families, ensuring that women and landless people are not excluded; organising waste pickers and promoting decentralised waste management; promoting sustainable livelihoods and climate adaptation; and documenting environmental harms to health and livelihoods as evidence for policy and litigation.

A hazard is a process, phenomenon or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation: a cyclone, an earthquake, a chemical leak. Exposure is the presence of people and assets in hazard-prone areas. Vulnerability is the set of conditions, physical, social, economic and environmental, that increase the susceptibility of individuals, communities or systems to the impacts of hazards. Capacity is the strengths and resources available to manage and reduce risk. Disaster risk is commonly expressed as risk = hazard × vulnerability ÷ capacity, sometimes with exposure added as a further multiplier. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction defines a disaster as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to human, material, economic and environmental losses. The Disaster Management Act 2005 defines it as a catastrophe, mishap, calamity or grave occurrence, from natural or human-made causes or by accident or negligence, that results in substantial loss of life, human suffering, damage to property or degradation of the environment and is beyond the coping capacity of the affected community. The point of both definitions is that a hazard becomes a disaster only when it meets vulnerable people without the capacity to cope; disasters are not simply "natural".

Natural disasters may be geophysical (earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides), hydrological (floods), meteorological (cyclones, heatwaves, cold waves), climatological (droughts, wildfires) or biological (epidemics and pandemics). Human-made disasters include industrial accidents such as the Bhopal gas disaster of 2 and 3 December 1984, when methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide plant, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), fires, building collapses, stampedes, and conflict and terrorism. India is highly exposed: by the estimates the National Disaster Management Authority uses, about 58.6 per cent of its landmass is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity, over 40 million hectares (about 12 per cent of the land) is flood-prone, about 5,700 km of its roughly 7,516 km coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis, and about 68 per cent of its cultivable area is vulnerable to drought. Major disasters include the Latur earthquake (1993), the Odisha super cyclone (1999), the Gujarat earthquake (26 January 2001), the Indian Ocean tsunami (26 December 2004), the Kedarnath floods (2013), the Kerala floods (2018) and the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the Disaster Management Act was invoked. The impact of disasters is physical (deaths, injuries, destruction), economic (lost livelihoods, assets and infrastructure), social (displacement, family separation, breakdown of services) and psychological (grief, anxiety, post-traumatic stress), and it falls hardest on women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities and socially excluded groups, who may also face discrimination in relief.

Internationally, the 1990s were declared the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, the Yokohama Strategy (1994) stressed prevention and preparedness, and the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–2015) set priorities for building resilience. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) has four priorities, understanding disaster risk; strengthening disaster risk governance to manage it; investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience; and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to "build back better" in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, and seven global targets, including substantial reductions in disaster mortality, the number of people affected, economic losses and damage to critical infrastructure. India shifted from a relief-centred to a risk-reduction approach after the Odisha cyclone and the Gujarat earthquake. The Disaster Management Act 2005 created the National Disaster Management Authority, chaired by the Prime Minister; State Disaster Management Authorities, chaired by Chief Ministers; and District Disaster Management Authorities, chaired by the District Collector or District Magistrate, with the elected head of the local authority as co-chairperson; as well as the National Disaster Response Force, the National Institute of Disaster Management and disaster response and mitigation funds. The National Policy on Disaster Management (2009) and the National Disaster Management Plan (2016, the first national plan, aligned with the Sendai Framework) followed.

Pre-disaster interventions by social workers include community vulnerability and capacity assessment, hazard mapping with communities, organising and training village and ward disaster management committees and task forces, ensuring that warnings reach those who are isolated, and building household and community preparedness. Post-disaster interventions include psychological first aid, which offers practical support and comfort, listens without forcing people to talk, and connects them with services; the identification and protection of vulnerable people, including unaccompanied children, who must be registered and traced to their families rather than placed hastily in institutions or adoption; fair and dignified distribution of relief, with attention to caste or gender discrimination; support for the bereaved; long-term psychosocial care for those with persistent distress; livelihood restoration; community participation in reconstruction; and care for the carers, because relief workers themselves suffer stress and burnout. Throughout, the goal is to leave the community less vulnerable and more capable than before, which is the meaning of "build back better".