Michael R. Edelstein Ph.D., Ramapo College of NJ¹

Abstract

Reflecting on a career spent traveling off the beaten EDRA path, the author reviews his work, the Theory of Environmental Turbulence that guides it and a methodological approach, Psycho-Social Impact Assessment. Working in different contexts, from localized to regional environmental disaster, the emergence of global climate issues is also discussed. A meta-project is proposed an invited EDRA members invited to form a network for coordinated global climate research aimed at collecting regional data but drawing global conclusions in a manner that informs rapid policy and action implementation.

Key Words: Environmental Psychology, Environmental Impact Assessment, Psycho-Social Impact Assessment, Climate Research

Introduction

This paper was part of the special round of EDRA at 50 papers solicited to discuss the direction of the field, past, present and future. Accordingly, it may be useful to begin with a few reflections upon my own EDRA story.

I started my Ph.D. program in Social Psychology in fall 1970 at SUNY Buffalo, and discovered Environmental Psychology my first semester in a course on organizations when I somewhat arbitrarily selected organizational environments as my research topic. Environmental Psychology reflected the new environmental era just then exploding. I entered the field and never looked back. I taught my first Environmental Psychology course in spring 1971 in the Psychology Program and was then invited to join the faculty of the School of Architecture and Environmental Design and later also BOSTI. I joined EDRA shortly thereafter. My initial interest was participation and participatory design.

In 1974, I left Buffalo to join the newly formed Environmental Studies program at Ramapo College of New Jersey at the invitation of Joel Kameron, who held the distinction of being the second ever Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology. Together we formed an Environmental Psychology cluster within a substantial School of Environmental Studies made up of faculty from diverse fields. We built early links between Environmental Psychology and Environmental Studies that presage the second branding of Ecological Psychology. At Ramapo, I also teamed up with colleagues to create an Alternative Energy Center where we created a participatory environment for experimenting with solar and wind energy, intensive food production, green building and how to create what we came to call sustainability.

My initial preoccupation was the energy crises of the 1970s. But as a member of my own community’s environmental commission, I soon became embroiled in issues of environmental siting and hazard that exposed a new emerging issue asyet unexamined by social scientists. In 1978 I attendedweeks of administrative hearings, observing the interplay between fearful and angry citizens and a government that put a lid on participation in order to advance its agenda as well asthat of a private waste entrepreneurwho ruthlessly distorted information to sell their project. This all happened in the context of environmental impact assessment, a recent meta-methodology that produced scientific knowledge for decision makers and a related from of administrative permit hearing that was designed to act as a science court. These represented a new form of civic encounter; everybody was learning how to act within new parameters and, as I observed, doing a poor job of it. I witnessed that affected citizens were not able to articulate their own impacts from projects in a manner that was considered evidence. And I realized that, as a Ph.D. Social Scientist, I could understand these impacts and testify to their validity (Edelstein, 1986/87).

Then with EDRA in Buffalo in 1979, I took the opportunity to visit Love Canal and interview residents. This encounter with a contaminated place and the people who unwillingly inhabited it changed me forever.As an Environmental Psychologist, I was now clearly focused on contamination, destructive environmental change and the need to adopt more sustainable ways of life. My long avocation as a community environmental leader, which began around this time, approached the same issues from the standpoint of activism. Between teaching in an interdisciplinary environmental setting, working on real community issues and working as a research social scientist, I gained an invaluable integrative interdisciplinary approach to issues while still maintaining my special expertise.

Over several decades, I brought this perspective into a string of workshops and papers at EDRA conferences only to be reminded of the marginality of my work in a field that had never really figured out how environment enters into Environmental Design and was often so wedded to empirical social psychology as to forgo theory and methods with utility in the real world. There was an overriding preoccupation with human built environments---how to create “place” without considering the actualplace that had been replaced, deplaced or displaced or defaced in the process. Concerns with user-based design andhow to create well-functioning human environments was conceived somehow without taking into account the integrity of the surrounding physical and ecological setting---a decontextualized contextualism.

During the late 1970s, Charlie Wolf launched the International Association of Impact Assessment within EDRA. Based on the game-changing National Environmental Policy Act and its action forcing mechanism of Environmental Impact Assessment, IAIA promoted researchwith direct application to environmental decision making. I found myself following IAIA when it spun off of EDRA.

Written in 1969, NEPA articulates the rationale for EDRA when it specifically calls for utilizing “a systematic, interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design arts in planning and in decision-making which may have an impact on man’s environment.” (National Environmental Policy Act 1970). It also anticipates the emergence of the concept of Sustainability (Edelstein 2010, a and b).

By the end of the 1970s, as I began to give testimony in environmental permit hearings and toxic torts, I was forced to invent new methods and theory. I created my brand of PSIA as a method for documenting human effects from significant adverse realized or anticipated changes to environment, including impacts to quality of life, psycho-social wellbeing, relationships and the ability to enjoy ones’ home, property andthe environment.By identifying environmental stressors that challenged people’s coping abilities, I developed an approach for showing cause and effect that was hard to prove using conventional social science methodology.

I applied PSIA in varied contexts, including toxic torts and administrative permit hearings for hazardous facilities and studied such issues as human-caused environmental disasters, geologic radon, high level nuclear waste disposal, terrorism, climate change and the impacts on minority and indigenous communities from adverse environmental change. As community advocacy, I worked to apply what I learned to my own community as the forty-year head of a non-profit organization, Orange Environment, Inc. Here I was able to innovate on novel approaches to issues of environmental harm and sustainability.

Despite my fortune to be working on such interesting issues, the fact that this work inspired little interest at EDRA was discouraging. If the time for pursuing issues of adverse environmental change and the need for an alternative sustainable approach had not jelled then, their moment is certainly here now. In the hope that interest will now be riper, I will summarize my approach to Psycho-Social Impact.

The Theory of Environmental Turbulence

From the beginning, I thought of the object of my studies as forms of “Environmental Turbulence” (Edelstein 1988, 2004). Quite literally, Environmental Turbulence shattersnormalcy, forcing those affected from their predictable lives into a situation of profound reactivity to forces beyond their understanding and control. As developed, the Theory of Environmental Turbulence relates to contamination of place as a local phenomenon as much as it relates to global climate change. Figure 1 depicts Environmental Turbulence as it targets the three major components of Psycho-Social existence.

Figure 1: Environmental Turbulence Targets the Psycho-Social Realm (Edelstein 2015)

These three realms of Psycho-Social Impact (see Figure 2) were defined through grounded research and became clear from my earliest work and refined over time by encounters with convergent and divergent information. As shown, they three perspectives of one phenomenon, not independent. And they roughly correlate to three dimensions of conventional psychology, the cognitive, behavior and emotional aspects of life. In the course of studying abnormal or reactive situations illuminated the basics of normal life that is disrupted. The core function of PSIA is to identify how the system(s) affected by realized or proposed change move from prior normalcy (the baseline) to the post-impact emergent states (the impacts).

Figure 2: Realms of Psycho-Social Impact (Edelstein 2015)

“Lifescape,” the cognitive domain, consists of the basic understanding or core assumptions of daily life. For individuals, the five most fundamental and common baseline assumptions are shown in Figure 3. In a particular situation the list may be modified or expanded. Figure 3(1) shows the common lifescape shifts found with Environmental Turbulence.

Figure 3: The Lifescape (a) and Common Shifts in Reaction to Environmental Turbulence (b) (Edelstein 2004)

The second realm of Psycho-Social Impact is “Lifestyle.” Lifestyle impacts consist of forced changes to routine activity and behavior as people adjust daily life to new conditions, alter their habits, suffer a loss of normalcy, take adaptive actions such as avoiding the use of their tap water, limiting their access to home and property, wearing a pollution mask when outdoors, divert attention and time to dealing with their new reality and coping with ill health and its secondary impacts. Such changes in behavior often carry disturbing meaning, reflecting loss, imposition, uncertainty, resistance to solution and potential permanency. One cause of lifestyle change results from the direct impacts of adverse environmental change, both disturbing in themselves and as a reminder of turbulence. Figure 4(Edelstein 1988, 2004)depicts direct stressors to nearby residents resulting from the operation of the Jackson Township, New Jersey municipal landfill. Note that depending on where people lived, their direct exposures varied.

Figure 4: Direct Impacts of the Jackson Municipal Landfill on Legler Residents (Edelstein 1988, 2004)

“Lifestrain”reflects the degree of stress resulting from Environmental Turbulence, the success of coping efforts and the ability to maintain overall psychological wellbeing. Factors that influence lifestrain are whether the threat is perceived and accepted as real or rationalized and denied, the impacts of culture shock from the new reality, direct stressors and forced change to normal life routine, lifescape reassessments, the person’s psychological health, availability of social support and coping resources, psychological and social dysfunctions created or exacerbated by the changed circumstances and the creation of anticipatory fears and worry. Lifestrain results from the Environmental Turbulence, itself, as well as all of the secondary impacts, including the effectiveness of response and potential for remedy.

Such secondary impacts include changed relational dynamics after the Turbulence. Victims become disabled by their own incapacity to address the consequences of Environmental Turbulence and dependent on experts whom they may not trust. They often discover that their old social relationships are not supportive under the new conditions. Outsiders fail to understand their plight and may be hostile. Environmental stigma may devalue their homes and communities and, by extension, themselves, threatening their community with contagion. Community conflict may ensue. In the midst of this abandonment, people forced to mobilize to self-assess and self-address impacts. They often find themselves allied with others who share the same conditions and forced into new roles as advocates for actions that would address their situation.Networks are formed across localities to share knowledge and strategy. Ironically, this enabling response may take back some of the lost control and efficacy, provide social support and a means of acquiring trusted information and force development of new capacities. Most importantly, it provides a basis of collective power in an inherently powerless situation. Efforts to seek remedy in the political or legal systems may offer some respite. But there are limits to this power. It is often the case that a long term environmental limbo results, in which affected people never get to fully return to normalcy, they are never made whole and their environment is never returned to its prior quality.

There is much to be learned about how lifescape, lifestyle and lifestrain interact in different situations. One aspect of this interaction that I have observed is that, just as normal life and life expectations vary across age and circumstance, impacts of Environmental Turbulence often vary dramatically across the lifecycle (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Lifecycle Matrix for Environmental Turbulence Impact (Edelstein 2015)

The effects of Environmental Turbulence need to be contextualized in another way as well. When I began working on the impacts of high level nuclear waste siting in the early 1980s, I quickly realized that the scope of PSIA must be broad and flexible. There was not a choice between studying the individual, the family, the community or the society. All of these shared a continuum of social process stretching between the individual to global society. Some basic rules of social process also became evident. Psycho-social impacts occur at all levels of social process. These levels are nested, interactive and interdependent.Dynamics at any one level influence all; and any level of process is influenced by other levels. Furthermore, social process occurs in a context formed by the conjuncture of environmental conditions and history that has profound influence over social process. The model of Social Process in Eco-Historical Context (Edelstein 1988, 2004) is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Social Process in an Eco-Historical Context (Edelstein 2004)

Weight and Weightlessness in a Culture of Contamination

Using the model of Social Process in Eco-historical Context, we realize that different dynamics occur at different levels of social process. Accordingly, while the documentation of Psycho-Social Impact may serve the important function at the individual, family and community level of social process of validating how people are affected by Environmental Turbulence and assisting claims for assistance, at an institutional and societal level, the dynamics may be very different.

The purpose of Psycho-Social Impact Assessment is to force government and industry to pay attention to potential significant adverse impacts---the harm and victimization caused to those affected by Environmental Turbulence---and to mitigate the effects whether they have already occurred or might potentially result from a planned change. In the latter case, if mitigation is not adequate or feasible, alternative actions can be selected or a permit denied.

The problem with this formulation is that such evidence is routinely overlooked or minimized due to a fundamental dilemma built into modern society. To paraphrase one environmental commissioner who minimized the impact of my work while acknowledging its validity, if we recognized psycho-social impacts as a basis for denying projects, we would never be able to permit anything (Edelstein 2003). I would restate this formulation a bit differently. The way that our society makes decisions guarantees that environmental injustices will result; they are a form of collateral damage, some must bear costs so that others may benefit (see, for example, Edelstein and Hughes, 2007).

I explored this distortion of understanding at an institutional/societal level of social process by comparing the United States and Russia (and its Soviet predecessor) in terms of how they dealt with environmental contamination and its victims. Despite dramatic differences between these two historically divergent societies, I discovered that both shared a common “Culture of Contamination.”Both held in common the same tendency to sacrifice the physical environment and those harmed as a result in order to achieve state aims (Edelstein, et. al. 2007). These conclusions were reinforced by a second ongoing project I subsequently undertook in 2011 to understand the Aral Sea disaster in Central Asia(Edelstein, et.al. 2012) as well as many projects in the U.S. and Canada (see, for example, Edelstein 2014).

Looked at from this global side of the Social Process model, my work suggests several broad conclusions:

1. Modernity is marked by a global pattern of victim production

2. Growth economics, financed through externalities, serves to accelerate entropy:

   • It is easy to pollute but hard to clean up

   • It is easy to degrade but hard to restore

   • It is easy to destroy health but hard to regain it

3. Risk is acceptable if someone else suffers the consequences

4. The few involuntarily bear the burden for others

5. Although portrayed as exceptional in the press, such victimization is routine, not rare

6. Despite the commonality of these outcomes, they are minimally recognized or acknowledged

As a result, the metapattern of modern developent behavior is resistant to learning information that might impede “progress,” inequality and greed. At the level of institutional and societal process, recognition of psycho-social impact is deemed dangerous. An Alberta Administrative panel labeled me a threat to public safety because I exposed in my research and testimony the substantially fictional underpinnings of emergency response planning (2014).The point is that it is considered preferable to suppress, deny or rationalize anomalies rather than address them.

Although the net effect of this system is to disable the population’s ability to live sustainably and safely, the counterveiling process of enabling that often results becomes a force for creating sustainable alternatives despite the odds. It remains to be seen how much collective exposure to Environmental Turbulence is required toforce eco-social change, transforming the metapattern toward a Sustainable alternative. I have become very interested in understanding the tipping points for social transformation. In my experience, the fulcrum for change is not altering low hanging fruit behaviors or attitudes, rational persuasion or even education, but rather the openness to fundamental “whole enchilada” change that is created by the unmitigated disconfirming experience of Environmental Turbulence.

I describe this process of change by building on Kuhn’s implicit model derived from his work on scientific transformation (1962). As shown in Figure 7, our societal lifescape, the Dominant Social Paradigm of Western Society (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1984; Milbrath, 1984) guidesus to make such assumptions as human’s rightful ascendency over nature and ability to use it freely for their own ends and that man can solve all problems with technology. This dominant paradigm is challenged by anomalies, events that are disconfirming. For a time, these anomalies can be discredited, rationalized and denied, but when they evidence serious challenge beyond defense, a paradigmatic crisis results until a new direction is found that addresses the anomalies. Once this new pathway is sufficiently mapped out, a “paradigmatic revolution” can follow, in this case, leading to a new Sustainable Paradigm. We can view Environmental Turbulence as anomalous events, much of our recent time as taken up with defenses of the old paradigm and the current period of confusion as a time of paradigmatic crisis. The task now is to become paradigm writers, articulating the new sustainable paradigm. Many are engaged in this task. The endpoint is overcoming the disabling nature of modernity and enabling a transformation to a sustainable successor paradigm.

Figure 7: Stages of Paradigm Change

Using Regional Research as a Bridge between Local and Global

There are many steps required to achieve a sustainable world, and they must include response and remediation for problems already caused or set in motion. The task is obvious, although perhaps not simple, for a known contaminated site. But for emerging phenomena, it is considerably more complex. For example, in addressing the global climate crisis, a key challenge is in producing effective responses to tipping point phenomena, such as the Aral Sea disaster. As shown in Figure 8, avoiding crossing the point of no return requires a reassessment of when we start to pay attention to problems. Our normal tendency is to recognize a problem when it is already passed the critical point and becoming an active threat. By the time we mobilize, it may have moved from threat to realized disaster. The point of the figure is to suggest that effective intervention must occur instead at the point of environmental change when conditions are still well within human adaptive range (Edelstein 2012). And that intervention point requires active monitoring and analyses to detect.

EDRA has interesting models to draw upon for the idea of regional study. It was implicit in the regional study of Lewis Mumford and his mentor Patrick Geddes that examined built form. And the original Ecological Psychology was based on a field station that monitored local behaviors (New World Encyclopedia, 2019; Barker 1990).

Figure 8: Monitoring Required for Effective Action (Edelstein 2012)

Creating a mechanism for this monitoring requires that every region have an interdisciplinary clearing house for the mass of existing relevant data while it collects missing essential information. I envision the earth’s regions divided into study regions where parallel research is performed on urgent issues. I will give two examples from my own work of what research might be undertaken.

Many years ago, I helped managea project to transform the Hudson River port in Newburgh, NY into an economic engine for the underemployed low income districts within walking distance of the waterfront.To give the community maximum input into the project, I developed a processcalled SPIA (Sustainability Planning and Impact Assessment) intended to simultaneously meet requirements of federal and state environmental impact assessment regulations while drawing on these regulations for the authority to develop and implement community sustainability plans in a manner that is enforceable, affordable and feasible.

The idea is simple. Conventional Environmental Impact Assessment asks the question: “Are there potentially significant adverse impacts associated with the proposal that, unless mitigated, must be weighed in deciding whether to permit the action?” SPIA adds a second question. “Does the proposed action move the community toward or away from sustainability?”While EIA lacks a point of view, SPIA is biased toward sustainable outcomes!

Where jurisdictions require EIA to be conducted to assess potential significant anticipated changes to the environment, SPIA offersan alternative way to meet the regulations assuming parties agree. A sustainability plan is written as part of the Generic Environmental Impact Assessment for a specified place or region (the SPIA) determining how the region can achieve sustainability on agreed upon indicators (such as the UN sustainable development goals). The SPIA is used to guide project specific impact assessments considered under the generic framework, favoring proposals expected to advance sustainability (Edelstein 2010 a and b, Edelstein 1999).

Another case in point is a recent study I conducted with my two co-requisite capstone Environmental Assessment courses. Students form a consulting firm and conduct a real environmental impact assessment study for real clients on a real topic. In this instance, the RFP given the students was for a project entitled“Impacts of Climate Change on the Ramapo Mountain Region”to be done on behalf of three local and national organizations. The project was inspired the late 2018 IPCC SR15 report which predicts severe climate impacts before mid-century not, as generally believed, far in the future. This and contemporary reports predicted a dramatic escalation of impacts associated with a likely 2.7 F to 3.6 F warming as well as such connected disruptions as very heavy precipitation, rain intensity, sea rise and flooding (UPCC 2018; National Climate Assessment, 2018). The assignedEnvironmental Impact Assessment was tasked with examiningclimate change impacts looking back thirty years as well as projected 30 years into the future for the four county region home to the Ramapo Mountains.

The goal of the study was to alert officials and residents of potential impacts requiring timely anticipatory adaptive steps leading to climate resilience in design decisions and public and private actions. The study also creates a model for ongoing monitoring and research necessary to verify and update projections. As a form of regional survey, the study approach is one that could be undertaken in any region and perhaps should be undertaken in all. And there-in lies an idea for EDRA.

As an international organization with more than 500 members, EDRA is in the position to undertake collaborative meta-studies intended to drive forward issues of sustainability transformation, risk and resilience and emergency response. Given EDRA’s reach to local regions of the world, itis uniquely positioned to undertake rapid response cumulative meta-assessments of climate impact, mitigation and adaptation. In this way, compliance with the Paris Agreement can be assessed,meta-regional trends analyzed and successful adaptive and mitigationstrategies shared. As millions of climate refugees move in search of new homes inside their countries and beyond, the cross-locational research could be invaluable in identifying receiving locations and paving the way for successful relocation.

Such projects should look beyond the built environment to promote ecosystem health. Required also is to move from local built environments to a global focus. Proposals such E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth(Wilson 2016), of importance in light of the recent UN prediction of one million pending extinctions (IPBES 2019)protective plans for a melted artic and a global plan for addressing coastal population protection and relocation are potential urgent environmental design research projects at a large scale.

Conclusion

In my work, I tend to focus on the potential for whole systems change rather than the proverbial low hanging fruit or other forms of incrementalism. I refer to my approach as “Whole Enchiladaism.” The reason for this perspective is simple. Incremental change does not easily lead to whole system change. In fact, in our work we must seriously consider whether much of Environmental Design effort goes into sustaining the Dominant Social Paradigm rather than enabling a paradigm shift to a sustainable society. It is time to change that.

These pages suggest a new agenda for EDRA and its membership. With 500+ members, EDRA is in a position to do comprehensive regional monitoring studies, accumulating data for analysis to provide cumulative patterns that inform how to adapt to rapid ecological change. In addition, collaborative meta- studies can be undertaken to address concrete questions comprehensively, so as to drive issues of sustainability transformation, risk and resilience and emergency response. For example, rapid dissemination of successful social and sustainable resettlement models might allow for better built environments for climate and other refugees. Such changes in EDRA practice would move to a holocentric perspective---not just biocentric or anthropocentric---but looking at the Whole Enchilada. In addition, we would move from academic professionals conducting whatever random research comes our way to a profession of collaborating change agents whose empirical skills are matched to eco-social change. If we are to be the agents of change, then EDRA needs to define the battle plan, deploying its research for social change capabilities broadly and in a fully integrated learning mode.

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