Paul Harrison (pantheist)

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Paul Harrison is an environmentalist and the founder and president of the World Pantheist Movement.

For most of his life, Harrison has been a journalist and writer on the environment and Third-World development. His best known books are Inside the Third World (1979) and The Third Revolution (1993) (on population and environment). He also wrote "The Greening of Africa" (1987) about sustainable development for Africa, and "Inside the Inner City" (1983) about inner city poverty in East London. His book on pantheism, Elements of Pantheism, was published by Element Books in 1999.

Harrison has worked for several UN agencies and travelled to many Third-World countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1988 he received a UN Environment Programme Global 500 award for his writings on environment. He has edited the United Nations Population Fund's "State of World Population," and was editor-in-chief for the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life. He was the lead author of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's "Atlas of Population and Environment." Since 2005 he has edited the United Nations Environment Programme's "Geo Yearbook: Overview of Our Changing Environment."

Harrison was born in Oldham, Lancashire, United Kingdom, in 1945, and has degrees in European languages and literature (Cambridge); political sociology (London School of Economics); and a Ph. D. from Cambridge in Earth Sciences and Geography. Since 2002 he has lived in California.

In July 1996 he posted the first page of what became the scientific pantheism site, and in 1997 he started the mailing list that grew into the World Pantheist Movement.