Paul Raskin is the founding President of the

Tellus Institute The Tellus Institute is an American non-profit organization established in 1976 with the aim of bringing scientific rigor and systemic vision to critical environmental and social issues. Tellus has conducted thousands of projects throughout the wo ...

, which has conducted over 3,500 research and policy projects throughout the world on environmental issues, resource planning,

scenario analysis Scenario planning, scenario thinking, scenario analysis, scenario prediction and the scenario method all describe a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and gener ...

, and

sustainable development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The ...

. His research and writing has centered on propagating the Great Transition. Raskin has served as a lead author on a number of high-profile international reports, including the U.S. National Academy of Science's Board on Sustainability, the

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a major assessment of the human impact on the environment, called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000, launched in 2001 and published in 2005 with more than $14 million of g ...

, the United Nations Environment Programme's

Global Environment Outlook Global Environment Outlook (GEO) is a series of reports on the environment issued periodically by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The GEO project was initiated in response to the environmental reporting requirements of UN Agenda ...

, the

Earth Charter The Earth Charter is an international declaration of fundamental values and principles considered useful by its supporters for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. Created by a global consultation process, ...

, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report.

Background

Born in Chicago in 1942, Raskin was raised in California, receiving a B.A. in physics and philosophy in 1964 from the University of California, Berkeley, where his senior thesis was supervised by philosopher of science

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (195 ...

. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University in 1970, and taught at the university level, becoming Chair of an interdisciplinary department at the State University of New York at Albany in 1973. In 1976, he co-founded the

, a non-profit research ad policy organization, where he has directed an interdisciplinary team working on environmental, resource, and development issues throughout the world. Raskin also founded the U.S. center of the Stockholm Environment Institute in 1989, the

Global Scenario Group The Global Scenario Group (GSG) was an international, interdisciplinary body convened in 1995 by the Tellus Institute and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to develop scenarios for world development in the twenty-first century. Further deve ...

(GSG) in 1995, and the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) in 2003.

Research contributions

Dr. Raskin's research has evolved through several phases: energy and environmental planning, integrated freshwater assessment,

climate change mitigation Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere. The recent rise in global average temperature is mostly caused by emissions from fossil fuels bu ...

strategies, and sustainable development studies. He conceived, developed, and disseminated widely used planning models, including the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning ( LEAP) system in 1980 and the Water Evaluation And Planning ( WEAP) system in 1990, both now maintained by the US Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute. More recently, he create
PoleStar
a comprehensive framework for exploring alternative global, regional and national scenarios. Since the Brundtland Commission's seminal

Our Common Future __NOTOC__ ''Our Common Future'', also known as the Brundtland Report, was published on October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland's, former Norwegian Prime M ...

in 1987, for which he was a contributing author, Raskin's work has centered on developing comprehensive long-range scenarios of socio-ecological systems at different spatial scales: river-basin, nation, region, and globe. Toward that end, he organized the GSG in 1995 as an interdisciplinary and international team to examine alternative global scenarios for the twenty-first century. The GSG's work culminated in the 2002 essay ''Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead'', of which Dr. Raskin was the lead author. This essay describes the historic roots of the contemporary global challenge and considers alternative pathways for world development, advancing a Great Transition path as the preferred route. Detailed simulation of contrasting scenarios integrates a large body of social, economic, and environmental data.

Great Transition

The conceptual point of departure of the Great Transition essay is that humanity is in the midst of a profound transition: the Planetary Phase of Civilization. According to this perspective, some form of global society will consolidate in the coming decades, but its ultimate character remains fundamentally and inherently uncertain. The development of the global system can branch in different directions, depending on the ways ecological systems respond to anthropogenic stresses, such as climate change and how social institutions evolve and conflicts are resolved. Most fundamentally, the form of twenty-first-century society that emerges will depend on which human values become ascendant and the choices people make in the critical years ahead. The essay envisions three broad classes of twenty-first-century scenarios — ''Conventional Worlds'', ''Barbarization'', and ''Great Transitions'' — and considers a number of variations within each category. This framework has been used in numerous global, regional and national scenario assessments, such as UNEP's

. A recent comprehensive review of over 450 global scenarios found the GSG's framework to be the most useful and archetypal, "a testament to the original concept of the GSG scenarios and their development and refinement over a 16 year period."

Selected publications

''Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization''
Boston: Tellus Institute, 2016.
''Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead''
Boston: Stockholm Environment Institute, 2002.
Contours of a Resilient Global Future
''Sustainability'' 6 (2014): 123–135.
The Century Ahead: Searching for Sustainability
''Sustainability'' 2, no. 8 (2010): 2626–2651.

''Ecological Economics'' 65, no. 3 (2008): 461–470.
Scenes from the Great Transition
''Solutions'' 3, no. 4 (2012): 11–17. (Accessed 6 June 2013).
Global Scenarios: Background Review for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
''Ecosystems'' 8 (2005): 133–142.

''Development'' 54 (2011): 287–290.

''Global Environmental Change'' 14 (2004): 137–146.
Global Sustainability: Bending the Curve
London: Routledge Press, 2002.
Halfway to the Future: A Reflection on the Global Condition
Boston: Tellus Institute, 2002. *Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. Report of the Board on Sustainability of National Academy of Sciences. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999.
Bending the Curve: Toward Global Sustainability
Second Report of the Global Scenario Group. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute, 1998 (Accessed 6 June 2013). *Global Energy, Sustainability and the Conventional Development Paradigm. ''Energy Sources'' 20 (1998): 363–383. *Water Futures: Assessment of long-range Patterns and Problems. Background Document of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of the World. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute/United Nations, 1997.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raskin, Paul American environmentalists Futurologists 21st-century American physicists Living people Sustainability advocates 1942 births

Background

Research contributions

Great Transition

Selected publications

See also

References