Contributions, missed opportunities, and future directions: A critical reflection on global climate change and environmental sustainability in AJCP over five decades

Abstract

In this contribution to the 50th Anniversary Special Issue, the authors consider how global climate change and environmental sustainability have been addressed in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP) over the last five decades. As we are increasingly exceeding critical planetary boundaries (global climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, etc.) with disastrous impacts on human well‐being—especially for peoples already marginalized—it is timely to consider the treatment of environmental issues in the history of the AJCP and in community psychology more broadly. This review of relevant articles is clustered into three topics derived from our critical understanding of the articles themselves: (a) public participation and power; (b) community‐level responses to environmental change, including its disproportionate impacts on marginalized groups; and (c) frameworks and worldviews that integrate the natural world as necessary context for research and action. The commentary on the featured articles is framed in terms of their key contributions, missed opportunities up to this point, and future directions for the field. While looking back at the past 50 years, the authors also have an eye to the years ahead and what work can be done to mitigate the harms of climate change, adapt to the emerging new environmental reality, and promote just and inclusive sustainabilities worldwide.

Looking back, moving forward: 50 years of the American Journal of Community Psychology

“…Dittmer and colleagues in their VSI-curated articles published in AJCP have addressed environmental sustainability and global climate change. They organize articles into three clusters: (1) public participation and power, (2) community-level responses to environmental change, including its disproportionate impacts on AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY | 255 marginalized groups, and (3) frameworks and worldviews that integrate the natural world as a necessary context for research and action (Dittmer et al, 2023). The VSI editors challenge notions that environmental sustainability is a too specialized topic and call on community psychologists to leverage community scholarship methods to "have the opportunity to play a bigger part in catalyzing systems change to address these issues" (Dittmer et al, 2023, p. 288).…”

Practical Exploration of Eco-Geological Survey Mapping in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau: Framework, Standard and Preliminary Cost Estimation

“…In recent years, geological survey institutions in some countries such as the United States, Britain, Russia and Japan have adjusted their tasks and directions, gradually breaking the traditional orientation and development model and focusing on resource exploration and development, disaster prevention and mitigation. They began to explore the role of human beings in the ecological environment and the coupling relationship between them from the perspective of Earth System Science [6][7][8][9], not only listing eco-geological surveying as an integral part of the national medium-and large-scale geological maps but also carrying out special geological surveys, such as agricultural eco-geology, urban eco-geology, eco-geology of large rivers and lakes and eco-geology of large projects [10][11][12]. The regional eco-geological mapping work in China started relatively late.…”