Paul Harrison

I am an environmental writer editor and photographer, and the founder and president of the World Pantheist Movement. I was born in Oldham, Lancashire, UK. After a gap year working with disadvantaged and handicapped children in Germany, I studied European languages and literature at Cambridge, spent a year at the University of Pisa on a Council of Europe scholarship, and did a Masters in political sociology at the London School of Economics. In 1968-9 I lectured on French language and literature at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Somewhat later in life, in 1995, I got my Ph. D. from Cambridge in Earth Sciences and Geography. For most of my life, I have been a writer on environment and Third-World development. I specialized in writing and photography about poverty and environment in developing countries. My best known books are Inside the Third World (1979) and The Third Revolution (1993) (on population and environment). I also wrote Inside the Inner City (1983) about inner city poverty in East London, and The Greening of Africa (1987) about sustainable development for Africa. I have edited the flagship reports of UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Population Fund and the UN Environment Programme, and traveled to many Third-World countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1988 I received a UN Environment Programme Global 500 award for my writings on environment and in 1992 a Population Institute Global Media Award for my writings on population. I was editor-in-chief for the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life's report Caring for the Future (1996). In 2001 I was the lead author of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Atlas of Population and Environment. Between 2004 and 2008 I edited the United Nations Environment Programme's annual report (formerly known as Geo Yearbook). In July 1996 I posted the first page of what became the scientific pantheism site, and in 1997 I started the mailing list that grew into the World Pantheist Movement. My pocket handbook on pantheism, Elements of Pantheism, was published by Element Books in 1999. I lived for most of my adult life in Hampstead, London, close to Hampstead Heath. Since 2002 I have lived in the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains in California. I have two sons, Alex and Sam.