Lynton K. Caldwell - Notable Accomplishments

Notable Accomplishments

During the 1960s Caldwell was virtually a lone voice in attempting to establish policies for the environment because such a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems did not then exist. In 1962 his groundbreaking article “Environment: A New Focus for Public Policy?” appeared in Public Administration Review, launching development of a new subfield of environmental policy studies. After 1962, he changed the main focus of his career towards examining policies for protecting the quality of the human environment. In 1972 he was the catalyst for founding the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University, Bloomington. His 1976 article "Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Heritage of American Public Administration" in Public Administration Review was a defining paper in the modern history of public administration.

Caldwell is perhaps best known as one of the principal architects of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the first act of its kind in the world, signed into law on January 1, 1970. In drafting A National Policy on the Environment in 1968 as consultant to Senator Henry Jackson, the head of the powerful Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Caldwell realized that more was needed than a mere a policy statement: an “action-forcing mechanism” would be necessary to secure federal agency compliance with the Act’s requirements. The origin of the requirement for preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) has been attributed to Caldwell, whose testimony at the Senate hearing in April 1969 laid the groundwork for inclusion of provisions requiring an evaluation of the effects of all major federal projects significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. In these “detailed statements,” as they were termed in the Act, all reasonably foreseeable social, economic, and environmental effects of a proposed action and any possible alternatives to it must be identified and assessed before any federal action takes place.

NEPA has been emulated, in one form or another, by more than one hundred other countries, and many states have also established “mini NEPAs.” When national government agencies first started to prepare EISs, there were no professional associations dedicated to the planning and problem solving that NEPA demanded. Subsequently, Caldwell's efforts in formulating NEPA, and later promoting it, lead to formation of the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP), a national professional association of persons who prepare EISs.