User Profile

Paul Raskin is President of the Stockholm Environment Institute. He founded Tellus in 1976, the U.S center of the Stockholm Environment Institute in 1989, the Global Scenario Group (GSG) in 1995, and the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) in 2003. The overarching theme of his work has been envisioning and analyzing alternative scenarios of development, and identifying the strategies, policies and values for a transition toward a future of environmental sustainability and human justice. Toward this larger aim, his work has ranged across themes (energy, water, climate change, ecosystems, development) and spatial scales (regional, national, river basin, global). He has pioneered integrated methods for long-range social and environmental assessment. This has led to a suite of computer-based tools that are now used in many countries, building the capacity of a new group of sustainability professionals. His work with the GSG culminated in the noted essay Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, which offers a rigorously grounded case for an alternative paradigm for global development in the 21st century. Dr. Raskin brought these insights to his work as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science’s Board on Sustainability, as a lead author for the IPCC and Millennium Ecosystem Assessments, as a key adviser to the UNEP Global Environment Outlook series, to drafting the Earth Charter, and numerous other efforts. He taught at the university level until founding the Tellus Institute in 1976.

Dr. Raskin received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Columbia University in 1970.

Website: Tellus Institute Homepage
Website: Great Transition Initiative