Paul Raskin

Since the Brundtland Commission's seminal Our Common Future 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.

Dr. Raskin's research has evolved through several phases: energy and environmental planning, integrated freshwater assessment, climate change mitigation 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 created PoleStar, a comprehensive framework for exploring alternative global, regional and national scenarios.

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