Ronald Colman

Dr. Ronald Colman is founder and executive director of GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group that has constructed an index of wellbeing and sustainable development called the Genuine Progress Index, using Nova Scotia as its test-bed. The GPI is a response to narrow measures like Gross Domestic Product, which record ecological destruction as economically positive. As Ron has put it, under such measures “we may appear to be richer, but our natural world is poorer.” GPI Atlantic is one of the world’s most comprehensive attempts to supply a GPI to a government to guide its legislative decisions, using a wide range of social, economic, and environmental indicators that have been ignored by mainstream economists.

 

Ron was born in Australia in 1947. A political scientist, he taught in universities for nearly two decades. He moved to Nova Scotia from Colorado in 1990 to teach international politics, political theory and philosophy at Saint Mary’s University. He has also worked as a researcher and speech-writer at the United Nations.

 

Ron’s career took a drastic turn after he read an October 1995 article in the Atlantic Monthly called “If the GDP is Up, Why is America Down?” It explored how progress is conventionally measured in items bought and sold rather than ecological and human health and happiness. Ron started a research project based on that article for his final year students, which eventually became GPI Atlantic. He quit his university job in 1997 in order to work full-time on the GPI, and has since authored and co-authored many reports on indicators of population health, social wellbeing, natural resource health, and environmental quality. In 2001 Ron co-authored the first comprehensive report measuring Nova Scotia’s ecological footprint.

 

From 2000 to 2003 Ron sat on the sustainable development indicators steering committee of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. He also served as editor of the national magazine, Reality Check: The Canadian Review of Wellbeing, from 2001 to 2005. In 2005 he hosted a major international conference of 450 delegates from 33 countries, including some of the world’s leading experts on joining social, economic, cultural and environmental objectives.

 

Hailed by Saltscapes Magazine as a “social-science rock star,” Ron travels extensively to present to the public and media, and advise governments, universities, and communities on indicator work. He also works closely with the Royal Government of Bhutan, which has adopted Gross National Happiness (rather than Gross National Product) as its central policy goal. In December 2009 he assembled progressive educators from around the world for an international workshop in Thimphu, Bhutan, on “Educating for Gross National Happiness.”

 

Ron is a practicing Buddhist and sometimes uses his Buddhist name, “Tashi.”

 
 

The following links lead to Silver Donald Cameron's various articles regarding GPI and the work of GPI Atlantic.