Paul Harrison - profile.


Weighing women's burdens, Yatenga province, Burkina Faso.


Profile.

Paul Harrison is a freelance writer and consultant on population, environment and development, based in London.

He holds masters degrees from Cambridge University (in European literature languages) and from the London School of Economics (in sociology), and a Ph. D. in environmental science from Cambridge University.

In 1988 he received a UN Environment Programme Global 500 Award for his writings about the environment, and in 1992 he received the Population Institute award for best population-environment reporting effort. He is an honorary fellow of the London- based Institute of Community Studies. Harrison has travelled widely in Asia, Africa and Latin America, visiting 52 countries in all.

He has written major reports for the United Nations Population Fund, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Bank, and has also consulted for the British Overseas Development Administration, USAID, World Health Organization, International Labour Office, the King of Lesotho, and many other organizations.

He has written the The State of World Population twice (in 1990 and 1992). He was an associate editor of the IPPF's People magazine and is a contributing editor of People & the Planet.

In 1994 he was team leader of a report to the European Commission on how to link population and environment in development practice. His most recent assignment was as editor-in-chief to the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, whose report, Caring for the Future, is condensed from a much larger version edited by Harrison.

Since 1996 he has been working towards the creation of the World Pantheist Movement. Starting in July 1996 he began to post sections from a forthcoming book on pantheism to the Web, and people with similar views began writing to him. The site has now had 620,000 visits and gets an average of 35,000 visits per month.

In March 1997 he set up a small pantheist mailing list of 35 people. This has now grown to 645 members from 43 countries (March 1999). He also set up a pantheist mailing list at Spiritweb for other types of pantheist, and Web forums at Delphi and CommunityWare.

In December 1997 volunteers from the mailing list drew up the Pantheist Credo and began incorporating and drawing up the constitution of the World Pantheist Movement, which opened its door for members on March 21, 1999.

Paul Harrison's book Elements of Pantheism will be published in May 1999 by Element Books.

His other books include:

Inside The Third World (Penguin, various editions 1979-1995).

A comprehensive survey of the major problems of developing countries, regularly updated. Inside the Third World has sold 150,000 copies.

The Third Revolution (Penguin, 1993 and 1995).

A survey of population and environment problems and the linkages between the two.

Out of print books:

The Third World Tomorrow (Penguin 1980).

A survey of the major new approaches to development of the 1980s.

The Greening of Africa (Penguin and Paladin, 1987).

A report on Africa's environmental and human problems, and sustainable approaches to solving them.


Inside The Inner City (Penguin 1983).

A survey of inner city poverty based in London's East End.


E-mail Paul Harrison at harrison@dircon.co.uk


Last Updated: April 09, 1999