Population Matters

Population Matters

Founded	1991 (1991)
Founder	David Willey
Type	Environmental charity Sustainability organisation Think tank Advocacy group
Focus	Promotion of smaller families, and sustainable consumption.
Location	United Kingdom
Method	Research, education, campaigning and lobbying
Key people	CEO, Simon Ross
Slogan	for a sustainable future
Website	populationmatters.org
Formerly called	Optimum Population Trust

Population Matters, formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust, is a population concern think tank and campaign group expressing concern about the impact of population growth on sustainability, quality of life and the natural environment, specifically natural resources, climate change, and biodiversity.

History and background

The Optimum Population Trust was founded in 1991 by the late David Willey and others who say that "They were impelled to act by the failure of UK governments to respond to a series of recommendations regarding population growth and sustainability." Their goals were to collect, analyse and disseminate information about the sizes of global and national populations and to link this to a study of carrying capacities and inhabitants’ quality of life in order to support policy decisions. The organisation's UK predecessors comprise: The Malthusian League (1877); The Simon Population Trust (1957); The Conservation Society (1966) and Population Concern (1974) an organisation that ultimately merged with Plan UK in 2013.

It prepared analyses and lobbied on issues affected by population growth, including welfare, education, labour supply, population ageing, immigration and the environment. It also lobbied developmental and environmental campaigners on the need to incorporate population issues in their thinking. It was granted charitable status on 9 May 2006. Population Matters was adopted as its campaign name in 2011.

Population Matters carries out research on climate change, energy requirements, biodiversity, and other issues in relation to population numbers. With the vision of reducing populations voluntarily in order to enable acceptable quality of life and protection of wildlife and the environment, it campaigns to stabilize population at a sustainable level through initiating a culture shift towards smaller family sizes worldwide and improving resources for women's empowerment programmes and family planning in lower income countries.

Views and aims

Population Matters states that its intermediate aims are: improved provision of family planning and sex education, better education and rights for women, and that couples voluntarily smaller families. For the UK specifically, it advocates greater effort to reduce the high rates of teenage pregnancy and unintended pregnancy and more balanced migration for reasons of sustainability.

Population concern

Population concern is presented as: "fundamentally a concern about the balance between human needs and the resources available to meet those needs, now, and for the foreseeable future."

A study conducted by a graduate from the London School of Economics and sponsored by Population Matters found that, for the past 30 years, increasing population size (driven by high fertility rates) was the primary reason for the number of people living in poverty across the 20 highest fertility nations, despite more people in these countries receiving aid. In addition to this, Population Matters has stated that continued growth has been affecting the living standards of people of the UK, particularly in the South East of England and London. The benefits of moderating population size are not limited to raising living standards and general environmental protection. In 2009, Population Matters issued a study asserting that contraception was also the cheapest way of combating climate change.

Population Matters is concerned that the planet may not be able to support more than half of its present numbers before the end of the century. In a recent survey commissioned by Population Matters, it was found that the majority of people surveyed shared these concerns, with four out of five (84%) thinking that the world population was too high and over half (53%) thinking that world population was much too high.

Campaigns and initiatives

Population Matters is the largest population concern advocacy group in the UK. With its members firmly believing that population can be stabilized and then reduced without coercion, Population Matters actively campaigns for sustainable population size in the UK and overseas and raises awareness about overpopulation, encouraging and enabling people to opt for a smaller family size.

Criticism

Population Matters has been criticised for calling for "zero-net migration" to the UK, and in December 2013, argued that the UK should accept no refugees from Syria. In the same year, they supported a UK government policy of stopping child benefit and tax credits for third and subsequent children; a policy described by journalist Polly Toynbee as representing “a eugenic undercurrent in Tory thinking".

Overshoot Index

The Population Matters Overshoot Index presents assessments of the extent to which countries and regions of the world are considered to be able to support themselves on the basis of their own renewable resources.

People

Probably the most famed patron of Population Matters is naturalist David Attenborough, who has been outspoken in his advocacy for the cause for many years. He has been vocal about the growing population in recent years and backs Population Matters in campaigning for a "more sustainable future."

Patrons

The patrons are:

• Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE, naturalist, broadcaster and trustee of the Royal Botanical Gardens
• Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics, Cambridge University
• Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford and author of The Population Bomb
• Baroness Shreela Flather, politician and past mayor of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead
• Dr Jane Goodall DBE, founder, Jane Goodall Institute and United Nations Messengers of Peace
• John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health, UCL
• Susan Hampshire OBE, actress and population campaigner
• Dr James Lovelock CBE, scientist and environmentalist known for proposing the Gaia theory
• Joanna Lumley actress, voice-over artist, former model, author and activist
• Aubrey Manning OBE, Emeritus Professor of Natural History, Edinburgh
• Norman Myers CMG, Visiting Fellow, Oxford, Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, California, Berkeley, Michigan and Texas
• Chris Packham, naturalist, author, television presenter and nature photographer
• Sara Parkin OBE, former Green Party of England and Wales activist and politician
• Jonathon Porritt CBE, environmentalist, writer, blogger and Chancellor of Keele University
• Malcolm Potts human reproductive scientist and Professor of Public Health at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Lionel Shriver Journalist and author
• Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, Chancellor of Kent University and former UK Representative United Nations Security Council

Board

A list of Population Matters board members can be found on the Population Matters website.

Team

A list of Population Matters team members, which may be composed of both staff and volunteers, can be found on the Population Matters website.

Members

Members receive publications but have no entitlement to vote. Active supporter members can apply for voting rights and can then stand for election to the board.

See also

• Futures studies
• List of countries by population
• List of countries by population growth rate
• List of population concern organizations
• List of sovereign states and dependent territories by birth rate
• List of sovereign states and dependent territories by population density
• Optimum population
• Over-consumption
• Overexploitation
• Political demography
• Population ageing
• Population density
• Population pyramid
• Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth
• Tragedy of the commons
• World population
• Zero population growth

External links

• Official website
• Roger Martin on BBC's Hardtalk

news articles

• Letter to New Scientist from David Willey (Subscription only)
• Guardian article: Citizens arrest
• Independent article: Overpopulation is main threat to planet
• Telegraph article: UK unable to sustain population, says study
• New Statesman article: Planet Overload
• Times article: David Attenborough to be patron of Optimum Population Trust
• Times article: Having large families is an 'eco-crime'
• The InterAcademy Panel Statement on Population Growth
• Faut-il réduire la population mondiale pour sauver la planète ?

other

• Ten Million Club: overpopulationawareness.org
• worldpopulationday.org