Paul Raskin
Encyclopedia
Paul Raskin is the Founding Director of the Tellus Institute
Tellus Institute
The Tellus Institute is a non-profit research and policy organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Its mission is to advance the transition to a sustainable, equitable, and humane global civilization. The Tellus Institute was founded in 1976 by Paul Raskin, Richard Rosen,...

 which has conducted over 3,500 research and policy projects throughout the world on environmental issues, resource planning, and sustainable development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...

. His research and writing has centered on formulating and analyzing alternative global and regional scenarios, and the requirements for a transition to a sustainable, just, and livable future — a future he calls a "Great Transition
Great Transition
Great Transition is a vision created by the Global Scenario Group of how humanity could create a civilization that reflects egalitarian social and ecological values, affirms diversity, and defeats poverty, war, and environmental destruction....

". His work on scenario analysis
Scenario analysis
Scenario analysis is a process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes . Thus, the scenario analysis, which is a main method of projections, does not try to show one exact picture of the future. Instead, it presents consciously several alternative future...

 has been the basis of numerous high-profile international assessments.

Background

Raskin received a B.A. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1964 and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1970. He then taught at the university level, becoming chair of an interdisciplinary department at the State University of New York
State University of New York
The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY , is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, with a total enrollment of 465,000 students, plus...

 at Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

 in 1973. In 1976, he co-founded the Tellus Institute
Tellus Institute
The Tellus Institute is a non-profit research and policy organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Its mission is to advance the transition to a sustainable, equitable, and humane global civilization. The Tellus Institute was founded in 1976 by Paul Raskin, Richard Rosen,...

, where he has directed a team of professionals in environmental, resource, and development policy research. Tellus has worked throughout North America and the world. Raskin also founded the U.S. center of the Stockholm Environment Institute
Stockholm Environment Institute
The Stockholm Environment Institute, or SEI, is a non-profit, independent research and policy institute specialising in sustainable development and environmental issues.-Mission:...

 in 1989, The Global Scenario Group
Global scenario group
The Global Scenario Group was a team of environmental scholars, headed by Paul Raskin, who used scenario analysis to analyze future paths for world development in the face of environmental pressures and crises...

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

Research contributions

Dr. Raskin’s research has evolved through several major phases: energy and the environment, integrated freshwater assessment, strategies for climate change mitigation, and sustainable development studies. He conceived, developed, and disseminated such widely used models as the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP
LEAP:Long range Energy Alternatives Planning System
LEAP: the Long range Energy Alternatives Planning system, is a proprietary, Windows-based software system for energy and environmental policy analysis. It is widely used for integrated energy planning and climate change mitigation analysis and has been applied in hundreds of different...

) system, the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP
WEAP
WEAP: the Water Evaluation And Planning system is a Windows-based decision support system for integrated water resources management and policy analysis...

) system and PoleStar, a comprehensive framework for exploring alternative global, regional and national scenarios.

Since 1995, his work has centered on developing comprehensive long-range scenarios of socio-ecological systems at different spatial scales: river-basin, nation, region, and globe. He led the GSG writing team for the influential essay Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead. This popular treatise is based on a large body of analysis of institutional, resource, and environmental trends and possibilities, and on detailed computer simulation of alternative global scenarios. The conceptual point of departure of this work is that humanity is in the midst of a profound transition, which the essay refers to as the Planetary Phase of Civilization
Planetary Phase of Civilization
The Planetary Phase of Civilization is a concept defined by the Global Scenario Group , an environmental organization that specializes in scenario analysis and forecasting...

. Some form of global society will consolidate in the coming decades but its ultimate character remains highly uncertain and dependent on the choices people make in the critical years ahead. The essay envisions three broad types of possible twenty-first century scenarios — Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, and Great Transitions — and a number of variations within each category.

Conventional Worlds are evolutionary scenarios that arise gradually from the dominant forces of globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

: economic interdependence grows, dominant values spread, and developing regions converge toward rich-country patterns of production and consumption. In the Market Forces variation, powerful global actors advance the priority of economic growth through such neo-liberal policies as free trade, privatization, deregulation, and the modernization and integration of developing regions into the market nexus. The Policy Reform
Policy reform
Policy reform, in addition to its more general meanings, has been used to refer to a future scenario which relies on government action to correct economic market failures and to stimulate the technological investment necessary for sustainable development and the creation of a truly sustainable...

 scenario adds comprehensive governmental initiatives to harmonize economic growth with a broad set of social and environmental goals. But Conventional Worlds visions face an immense challenge. They must reverse destabilizing global trends — social polarization, environmental degradation, and economic instability — even as they advance the consumerist values, economic growth, and cultural homogenization that drive such trends.

If unattended, ominous environmental and social trends could lead to systemic global crisis and development could veer toward a Barbarization scenario. Such a tragic retreat from civilized norms might take the form of an authoritarian Fortress World, with elites in protected enclaves and an impoverished majority outside, or Breakdown, in which conflict spirals out of control, waves of disorder spread, and institutions collapse.

By contrast, Great Transitions are transformative scenarios in which a new suite of values ascend — human solidarity, quality of life
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...

, and respect for nature — that revise the very meaning of development and the goal of the “good life”. In this vision, solidarity is the foundation for a more egalitarian social contract, poverty eradication, and democratic political engagement at all levels. Human fulfillment in all its dimensions is the measure of development, displacing consumerism and the false metric of GDP. An ecological sensibility that understands humanity as part of a wider community of life is the basis for true sustainability and the healing of the Earth. One Great Transition variation is Eco-Communalism
Eco-communalism
Eco-communalism is an environmental philosophy based on ideals of simple living, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and local economies. Eco-communalists envision a future in which the economic system of capitalism is replaced with a global web of economically interdependent and interconnected...

, a highly localist vision favored by some environmental subcultures. But the plausibility and stability of radically detached communities in the planetary phase are problematic. The New Sustainability Paradigm is more promising, seeing globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

, not only a threat, but also an opportunity for forging new categories of consciousness: global citizenship
Global citizenship
Global citizenship applies the whole world to bring world peace and the concept of citizenship to a global level and is strongly connected with the concepts of globalization and cosmopolitanism. World citizenship is a term which can be distinguished from global citizenship, although some may merge...

, humanity-as-whole, the wider web of life, and sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

 and the well-being of future generations. This is a pluralistic vision that, within a shared commitment to global citizenship, celebrates diverse regional forms of development and multiple pathways to modernity.

This scenario framework been used in numerous global, regional and national scenario assessments, such as UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook
Global Environment Outlook
The UNEP Global Environment Outlook project was initiated in response to the environmental reporting requirements of Agenda 21 and to a UNEP Governing Council decision of May 1995 which requested the production of a new comprehensive global state of the environment report.The coordinated global...

.

Selected writings on global scenarios


  • Global Environmental Outlook Scenario Framework. (2002)

  • Global Sustainability: Bending the Curve. London: Routledge Press. (2002)

  • Halfway to the Future: A Reflection on the Global Condition. Tellus Institute. (2002)

  • Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. Report of the Board on Sustainability of National Academy of Sciences. (1999)
  • Bending the Curve: Toward Global Sustainability. Second Report of the Global Scenario Group. (1998)
  • Windows on the Future: Global Scenarios and Sustainability. Environment Magazine. (April 1998)

  • Global Energy, Sustainability and the Conventional Development Paradigm, Energy Sources, 20:363-383. (1998)

  • Water Futures: Assessment of long-range Patterns and Problems Perspectives. Background Document of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of the World. Stockholm Environment Institute/United Nations. (1997)
  • Branch Points: Global Scenarios and Human Choice. First Report of the Global Scenario Group. (1997)
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