What I Learned, What Was New, and What Was My ‘Aha’ Moment from the Course

Reflective Journal
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Reflective Journal
What I Learned, What Was New, and What Was My ‘Aha’ Moment From The Course
This course tackled the complexity of social work. Social workers work in quite a challenging and complex space (Cane et al., 2022). This course provided great insights into what creates this complexity. I learned that climate change and intersectionality are some of the critical factors that bring about complexity. Climate change brings about many events, including floods, fires, and increased health problems such as water-borne diseases (Lecture on Introduction to complexity). I dived further to examine the relationship between climate change and conflicts. In the event of droughts, communities tend to migrate from one region to another in search of water and food.
Climate change has become a global concern (Masson, 2021). The intensity of climate change impacts depends heavily on vulnerability (Lecture on "Determinants of Climate Risk"). I have learned that climate change adversely affects people's social lives, often leading to migrations and conflicts (Koubi, 2019). I have also learned something new about the climate conflict nexus, where climate change acts as a threat stressor and triggers conflicts (Lecture on "The Climate –Conflict Nexus." I have understood that climate change renders individuals more exposed to Conflict, threatening human security (Lecture on "Reciprocal Vulnerability"). The biggest realization in this training was that women are the most vulnerable to climate change. Previously, I felt everyone is equally susceptible to climate change. As a result of climate change, low-income populations are disproportionately impacted by pollution from industry in the surrounding regions. Due to a lack of financial resources, communities of color and the poor are often situated near toxic waste dumps. Given the government's contempt for the poor, it seems sensible to add more hardship to their life. I think the four "isms" will merge soon (Lecturers notes on “Challenges for the Rural and Urban Poor”).
In most cases, this will lead to Conflict as they will find another community where they relocate to, leading to Conflict that may even result in death as they battle for the limited resources. (Lecture SWH 404-Migration and Conflict). The course very well brought out the concept of intersectionality, birthing out inequality. I was particularly impressed by the great examples that helped me understand inequality as a result of various groupings of individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, race, or even class. Changes in resource availability and the resulting migration are having knock-on impacts on human freedoms, national politics, and perhaps the escalation of violence inside and between nations, all of which are influenced by the climate crisis. The climate catastrophe also poses questions of fairness at the regional level. Alves (2020) notes that weather patterns result from climate change, affecting all the world's nations and states (Alves, 2020). These tremendous climatic disasters are only the beginning of what the Earth has in store for us. T...