Empowerment practice for social and environmental well- being: What practitioners need to know.

What is it about?

Following an overview of empowerment practice to date, this article discusses the importance of shifting from a social determinants of health perspective to a ecological determinants of health approach. It differentiates between the different worldviews that underlie different types of empowerment practice, including western and Indigenous worldviews. This article maps a number of dimensions of empowerment practice including worldviews, political alignment and agency imperatives or motivations which underlie each. Finally it discusses three important skills sets for empowerment practitioners.

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Why is it important?

In today's globalized contexts and escalating levels of ecological degradation, it is important that health promoting empowerment practice avoids Western, neo-liberalist approaches to empowerment practice orientated towards individual responsibility and behaviour change which perpetuate the status quo in terms of human-centrism, environmental degradation and health inequalities. In particular practice must incorporate Indigenous approaches to empowerment which emphasize the inter-connectedness of all life forms and view humans as just one species among others. Effective empowerment work, particularly practices aligned with goals of sustainable development, must include working knowledge of the worldviews, political alignment and agency imperatives or motivations that underlie such efforts.

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