Great Transition

The Great Transition is a term used by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) to describe a vision of a just and sustainable global future. The term was originally used by Kenneth E. Boulding in The Meaning of the 20th Century – The Great Transition (1964), considered a hallmark conception of systems thinking and the shift from pre-modern to post-modern culture and the four possible courses of action that will allow humanity to successful journey the Great Transition. The elements of the Great Transition vision include egalitarian social and ecological values, increased human interconnectedness, improved quality of life, and a healthy planet, as well as an absence of poverty, war, and environmental destruction. The Great Transition concept has been adopted by numerous individuals and organizations in the sustainability sphere, most notably by Prime Minister of Bhutan Jigme Thinley, the New Economics Foundation, and the Capital Institute, and it was used as a major theme for the 2011 SmartCSOs conference on strategies for Civil Society Organisations in London.

The term Great Transition was first introduced by the Global Scenario Group (GSG), a faculty international body of scientists convened in 1995 by the Tellus Institute and to examine the requirements for a transition to a sustainable global society. The GSG set out to describe and analyze scenarios for the future of the earth as it entered a Planetary phase of civilization. The GSG's scenario analysis resulted in a series of reports, and its findings were summarized for a non-technical audience in the essay Great Transition: the Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead.

Since its introduction, the term "Great Transition" has often been used by organizations or individuals in the environmental/sustainability domain to describe a paradigmatic shift of civilization towards the behaviors and values that would be necessary for a sustainable global civilization to flourish. A sequel to the Great Transition essay—Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization—was released in 2016.

The Global Scenario Group organized its scenarios into three categories: Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, and Great Transitions.

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