From indirectly to directly positive: the contribution of a positive orientation to environmental policy

ABSTRACT

Policy goals regarding many environmental topics have undergone a shift in recent decades, from environmental protection and elimination of hazards to the enhancement of sustainability. Yet the concept of sustainability is critiqued for its vague definitions, playing host to competing value systems that are often poorly articulated. In parallel, the field of psychology has experienced a broadening of focus from psychopathologies to positive psychology, with its emphasis on enhancing psychological wellbeing. Using a framework of categories for positive psychology, we conceptualize changes in sustainability policy as a ‘positive orientation’ in environmental policy. Examples from various areas of environmental policy illustrate the differences in approach that have already taken place. The framework is then used to reconceptualize familiar tensions in sustainability policy, such as the need to articulate localized rather than globalized goals and the risks of greenwash, as outcomes of an uncritically positive approach. From a practical perspective, the positive orientation framework can encourage policy-makers to contextualize environmental issues within a broader system and thus ensure a holistic, indirectly and directly positive, policy response for the benefit of human and planetary wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental policy
• positive psychology
• sustainability
• environmental governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://sswm.info/sites/default/files/reference_attachments/UN%20WCED%201987%20Brundtland%20Report.pdf

2 To avoid confusion it is worth noting that Pawelski (2016b) refers to this aspect of directly positive action as its ‘sustainability’ (with no connection to environmental sustainability).

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shula Goulden

Dr Shula Goulden is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on urban environmental policy and governance, drawing on social theory including sociology and science and technology studies. She has published several articles on policy, governance and connections to knowledge in the fields of sustainable construction policy, stormwater management and standards for environmental and public health. Dr Goulden has an MA in Geography from Cambridge University and an MSc in environmental policy from the London School of Economics, UK. She earned a PhD from Ben Gurion University, Israel, researching policy networks and discourse in sustainable construction, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Technion – Israel Institute for Technology in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

Dorit Kerret

Dr Dorit Kerret is a tenured Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University. Her current research focuses on the relationship between positive psychology and sustainability and the potential of their reciprocal effects on policy. Her research in the field of positive sustainability is a natural development of her previous research focus on policy tools, studying how different policy tools should be designed and implemented in order to affect the behavior of their subjects, using concepts of positive psychology such as inspiring hope and focusing on the positive. Dr Kerret is the head of the ‘positive sustainability’ lab. With students and colleagues the lab develops and extends the basic model of positive sustainability and its application to various fields and contexts. This includes two international conferences and various working papers in different aspects of the field (i.e. demographic trends, green campuses, farmers in the developing world). Dr Kerret completed a Ll.B in the Law Faculty, Tel-Aviv University and an M.A and PhD in Geography in Tel-Aviv University. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard School of Public Health, where she was both a Fulbright and a Rothschild Fellow.