Population Matters был основан как Optimum Population Trust после встречи 24 июля 1991 года покойного Дэвида Уилли и других лиц, обеспокоенных численностью населения и устойчивостью. Они были вынуждены действовать из-за неспособности правительств Соединенного Королевства отреагировать на рост населения и угрозы устойчивости.
Optimum Population Trust подготовил анализы и лоббировал вопросы, связанные с ростом населения. 9 мая 2006 года ему был предоставлен благотворительный статус. В 2011 году его новое название было принято в качестве нового названия.
Взгляды и цели
«Вопросы народонаселения» подчеркивает, как быстрый рост населения способствует разрушению природы и истощению природных ресурсов. Благотворительность продвигает позитивные, добровольные меры по достижению устойчивой численности населения, что позволяет каждому иметь достойное качество жизни при сохранении окружающей среды.
По прогнозам Организации Объединенных Наций, численность мирового населения достигнет 9,7 миллиарда в 2050 году и 10,9 миллиарда в 2100 году, что, по мнению организации, свидетельствует о безотлагательности этого вопроса.
Зрение
Миссия
Миссия Population Matters состоит в том, чтобы стимулировать позитивные, крупномасштабные действия, поощряя выбор, который помогает добиться устойчивого развития человеческого населения и восстановления окружающей среды.
Решения
Population Matters предлагает пять решений для замедления и, в конечном итоге, обращения вспять прироста населения:
Кроме того, признавая непропорционально большой экологический след богатых стран, благотворительная организация призывает к сокращению потребления в странах с высоким уровнем доходов.
мероприятия
Кампании «Население имеет значение» по стабилизации численности населения на устойчивом уровне путем поощрения культурного сдвига в сторону уменьшения размеров семей во всем мире и улучшения финансирования расширения прав и возможностей женщин и планирования семьи в странах с низкими доходами. На протяжении многих лет организация поддерживала различные кампании, в том числе законопроект Кэролайн Лукас, согласно которому личное, социальное, медицинское и экономическое образование ( PSHE ) стало обязательным требованием в школах, финансируемых государством. Он также информирует общественность о перенаселенности и положительных решениях посредством своих коммуникаций, мероприятий и информационно-пропагандистской деятельности. Наконец, благотворительная организация заказывает исследование для углубленного изучения некоторых вопросов, например, анализа последних прогнозов ООН в области народонаселения или изучения воздействия роста населения Великобритании на биоразнообразие.
Population Matters издает независимый от редакции Journal of Population and Sustainability, открытый, рецензируемый, междисциплинарный журнал, исследующий все аспекты взаимосвязи между численностью населения и проблемами окружающей среды.
Организационная структура
Population Matters состоит из покровителей, консультативного совета, правления, команды сотрудников, волонтеров и членов. Его финансирование зависит от членов и доноров.
Покровители
Критика
В 2015 году журнал Population Matters подвергся критике за сообщение в блоге, не согласное с призывом Amnesty International к Великобритании и другим странам ЕС «значительно увеличить количество мест для переселения и гуманитарного приема беженцев из Сирии», в то время как эти «страны должны продолжать поддерживать мигрантов из сирийской гражданской войны и других конфликтов в странах, прилегающих к этим конфликтам «. Впоследствии организация подтвердила, что это никогда не было официальной политикой в области народонаселения и что она была отвергнута и отменена. Optimum Population Trust призывал к численно сбалансированной или «нулевой» миграции в Великобританию, но не продолжал поддерживать эту политику, поскольку население имеет значение. В 2015 году организация Population Matters выступила за прекращение выплаты детских пособий и налоговых льгот для третьих и последующих детей. В 2017 году организация перестала выступать за конкретные изменения в политике, заменив их призывом к политике в области устойчивого развития народонаселения.
Although population growth in the 20th and 21st centuries has skyrocketed, it can be slowed, stopped and reversed through actions which enhance global justice and improve people’s lives. Under the United Nations’ most optimistic scenario, a sustainable reduction in global population could happen within decades.
We need to take many actions to reduce the impact of those of us already here – especially the richest of us who have the largest environmental impact – including through reducing consumption to sustainable levels, and systemic economic changes.
One of the most effective steps we can take to reduce our collective environmental impact is to choose smaller family size, and empower those who can’t make that choice freely to do so.
A little less makes a lot of difference
The United Nations makes a range of projections for future population growth, based on assumptions about how long people will live, what the fertility rate will be in different countries and how many people of childbearing age there will be. Its main population prediction is in the middle of that range – 9.7bn in 2050 and 10.9bn in 2100.
It also calculates that if, on average, every other family had one fewer child than it has assumed (i.e. ‘half a child less’ per family), there will be one billion fewer of us than it expects by 2050 – and nearly four billion fewer by the end of the century (within the lifetimes of many children born now). If that happens, our population will be smaller than it is today.
We can bring birth rates down
Many countries have had success in reducing their birth rates. Thailand, for instance, reduced its fertility rate (the average number of children per woman) by nearly 75% in just two generations with a targeted, creative and ethical family planning programme.
In the last ten years alone, fertility rates in Asia have dropped by nearly 10%.
1) Empowering women and girls
Where women and girls are empowered to choose what happens to their bodies and lives, fertility rates plummet. Empowerment means freedom to pursue education and a career, economic independence, easy access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, and ending horrific injustices like child marriage and gender-based violence. Overall, advancing the rights of women and girls is one of the most powerful solutions to our greatest environmental and social crises. Solutions 2 and 3 below are both tightly linked with female empowerment.
2) Removing barriers to contraception
Currently, more than 200 million women who want to avoid pregnancy are not using modern contraception. There are a variety of reasons for this, including lack of access, concerns about side-effects and social pressure (often from male partners) not to use it. These women mostly live in some of the world’s poorest countries, where population is set to rise by 3 billion by 2100. Overseas aid support for family planning is essential – both ensuring levels are high enough and that delivery of service is effective and goes hand-in-hand with advancing gender equality and engaging men.
Across the world, some people choose not to use contraception because they are influenced by assumptions, practices and pressures within their nations or communities. In some places, very large family sizes are considered desirable; in others, the use of contraception is discouraged or forbidden. Work with women and men to change attitudes towards contraception and family size has formed a key part of successful family planning programmes. Religious barriers may also be overturned or sidelined. In Iran, a very successful family planning campaign was initiated when the country’s religious leader declared the use of contraception was consistent with Islamic belief. In Europe, some predominantly Catholic countries such as Portugal and Italy have some of the lowest fertility rates.
3) Quality education for all
Ensuring every child receives a quality education is one of the most effective levers for sustainable development. Many kids in developing countries are out of school, with girls affected more than boys due to gender inequality. Education opens doors and provides disadvantaged kids and young people with a «way out». There is a direct correlation between the number of years a woman spends in education and how many children she ends up having. According to one study, African women with no education have, on average, 5.4 children; women who have completed secondary school have 2.7 and those who have a college education have 2.2. When family sizes are smaller, that also empowers women to gain education, take work and improve their economic opportunities.
A UN survey showed that the more educated respondents were, the more likely they were to believe that there is a climate emergency. This means that higher levels of education lead to the election of politicians with stronger environmental policy agendas.
4) Global justice and sustainable economies
The UN projects that population growth over the next century will be driven by the world’s very poorest countries. Escaping poverty is not just a fundamental human right but a vital way to bring birth rates down. The solutions above all help to decrease poverty. In addition, lower child mortality through improved access to health care and better economic opportunities lead to smaller family size also. International aid, fair trade and global justice are all tools to help bring global population back to sustainable levels. A more equal distribution of resources and transitioning away from our damaging growth-dependent economic systems are key to a better future for people and planet.
5) Exercising the choice
In the developed world, most of us have the power to choose the size of our families – although we may also face pressures of all kinds over the size of the families we choose to have. When making choices about that, it’s important to remember that people in the rich parts of the world have a disproportionate impact on the global environment through our high level of consumption and greenhouse gas emissions – in the UK, for instance, each individual produces 70 times more carbon dioxide emissions than someone from Niger. When we understand the implications for our environment and our children’s futures of a growing population, we can recognise that choosing smaller families is one positive choice we can make.
We depend on our members. Your regular contribution will help create a better future through campaigning, lobbying, education and research activities, and moving population up the public agenda.
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Population affects everyone’s well-being, other species and humanity’s future on our one planet.
Population Matters is one of the foremost charities campaigning on the issue of population globally, and the only UK charity whose mission is to raise awareness of the environmental impact of our growing numbers.
Your support will help create a better future for you, your children and grandchildren and many generations to come.
You’ll be supporting campaigns, helping to lobby governments worldwide and ask other charities to recognise that population size also matters to the causes they promote. Your donations will help champion women’s rights and advocate for smaller families at home and abroad.
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Population Matters (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust) is a think tank and charity promoting «stabilisation and gradual population decrease globally and in the UK» as an environmental measure, but also as beneficial for the economy, development and for other social reasons. [1]
Sir David Attenborough became a patron of the organisation in April 2009. [2]
Contents
History
The trust was set up in 1991 by David Willey (now deceased) to monitor and discuss population trends and human carrying capacity. Their website states:
Figures
The Population Matters says that 43% of births, or 80 million pregnancies a year are unwanted, and suggests policies which help to avoid them. [4]
Population and environment
Population Matters aims to raise the profile of the role that population growth plays in environmental damage, and in particular climate change.
Population Matters’ chair Roger Martin attended the Global Humanitarian Forum in June 2009 [5] and is quoted in newspaper articles putting across the think tank’s point of view. He argues:
there is not a single environmental problem that would not be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder and ultimately impossible to solve, with more. [6]
A quarter of a million more people are born each day. Until we address that there’s no point in doing anything else. [7]
Population Matters claims there is a taboo on discussing the impact of population on the environment and advocates an end to this taboo, leading to an open discussion on how to reduce population growth worldwide. They also promotes so-called ‘non-coercive’ policies which will support this (through contraception, immigration tightening and education). Population Matters also makes a case that reducing births in developing nations such as Kenya is an effective policy to reduce carbon emissions. As Martin says:
It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up. [8]
In September 2011 the Radical Statistics Population Studies group presented a paper critiquing the science behind the claims of Population Matters at the British Society for Population Studies annual conference in York. Their website explains:
Radical Statistics’ Population group of UK demographers/population scientists and statisticians, have examined the claims and policy of Population Matters finding them guilty of frequent overstatement, rhetoric and one-sided assertion rather than evidence that population growth is the main cause of environmental threats. Like others concerned about overpopulation before them, Population Matters promote policies that erroneously focus on the groups who consume the least. The Radical Statistics group calls on high profile patrons of Population Matters to reconsider their support, including the naturalists and broadcasters David Attenborough and Chris Packham, environmental campaigner Jonathan Porritt, and senior academic and cultural figures. [9]
that many of the proposed policies carry with them the implicit assumption that each person’s carbon emissions are equal, and as such erroneously focus their policy on socio-economic groups that don’t contribute highly to carbon emissions. that a link between an individual country’s human population size and environmental degradation is not evident and cannot be reduced to the simple ecological concept of carrying capacity. that some of the policies proposed would have negligible effect on the world’s population size. [10]
In May 2009, a Sunday Times article ‘Billionaire club in bid to curb population’ showed that business leaders and wealthy individuals were jumping on the population reduction train, identifying the growing population as the number one social and environmental issue (and one which they argue is mostly the fault of the developing nations). [11]
He concludes that the Population Matters is an example of ‘the worst form of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.’ ‘It’s time we had the guts to name the problem. It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich.’ [15]
Views of Population Matters’ supporters
Jonathon Porritt, former Sustainable Development Commission chair and patron of the Population Matters, claimed that reproductive policies are key to environment and development. He said:
Had there been no ‘one child family’ policy in China there would now have been 400 million additional Chinese citizens. [16]
It should be noted that Porritt made this statement in a personal capacity rather than as a representative of the Population Matters and China’s one-child policy has not been endorsed or commented on by the Population Matters or its website.
Population Matters’ view on consumption levels
The Population Matters website does address levels of consumption in affluent countries, saying:
Population Matters’ overall task is to enable people to recognise the links between the quality of life and environmental destruction and (a) high population levels; (b) wasteful consumption; and (c) poor technology. Population Matters concentrates on (a) because other environmental organisations dangerously neglect this component. In addition it is a subject which until recently has been shunned by the media. Seeking to reshape people’s reproductive behaviour, however democratically, involves the intimate decisions of individuals and is seen as an infringement of human rights. Population Matters believes that all other human rights and needs will suffer if this issue continues to be ignored. [18]
The Population Matters holds the view that addressing environmental and carbon footprint is needed but that it will not be enough without population reduction:
The global footprint is an average of a wide range of values ranging from 0.65 gha/cap (Afghanistan), through 4.8 gha/cap (Europe) and 9.6 gha/cap (USA), up to 10.2 gha/cap (United Arab Republic). According to the GFN, the 956 million population of the high-income countries have a footprint of 6.4 gha/cap which is eight times higher than that of the 2.3 billion inhabitants of the lowest-income countries (footprint = 0.8gha/cap.) An estimate by Andrew Ferguson, Editor of the Population Matters Journal, is that if the 956 million people in the developed world cut their footprint by two-thirds, it would still not balance the effect of the lowest-income 2.3 billion increasing their footprint by half of the per capita cut in the developed world. [19]
UK population reduction policy
Population Matters says:
OPT calculations suggest that even if we comprehensively greened our lifestyles, the UK could only support 27 million people – less than half its present population – from its own resources. It’s tempting to think we can always buy our way out of trouble but apart from being grossly unfair to poorer people in developing countries, this would be an exceptionally high-risk strategy in a world of growing hunger and increasing resource nationalism. [20]
Population Matters advocates stabilising and then reducing the UK population to an ‘environmentally sustainable level’ by:
Population Matters’ arguments for limits to national populations are based on the concept of carrying capacity, a useful ecological theory which says that an ecosystem will collapse if populations of species within it outstrip the resources available. They claim that the UK has outstretched its carrying capacity and cannot sustainably support its current population with its limited resources. However, the Radical Statistics Population Studies group present a wide range of scientific evidence to show that the notion of carrying capacity is of limited use in relation to human populations, because;
i) humans have regularly increased the capacity of the earth through their own endeavours to improve agricultural and industrial techniques and ii) human consumption is not driven by biological needs only, but is responsive to versatile cultural attitudes and adaptive to changing cultural contexts. [22]
I.e it is the current unsustainable level of resource consumption that is the main problem, not the sheer number of humans irrespective of their varying impacts.
With no credible scientific backing to support the environmental impacts of increasing the UK’s population Population Matters’ policies such as zero net migration can be seen as a right wing stance which plays dangerously into the campaigns of nationalist and fascist parties such as the British National Party and the UK Independence Party.
Contraception as carbon offsetting
In December 2009 Population Matters made headlines by suggesting that reducing population growth in the global South (particularly Africa) will have a large impact on carbon emissions, with the least economic cost. Their report, «Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost», said, ‘every £4 spent on family planning saves one tonne of CO2. A similar reduction would require an £8 investment in tree planting, £15 in wind power, £31 in solar energy and £56 in hybrid vehicle technology.’ [23]
The Population Matters has set up a carbon offsetting provider called Pop Offsets which will sponsor family planning programmes in countries with the highest birth rates (and lowest climate impact) to offset (and therefore promote the continuation of) carbon intensive companies and individuals. [25]
In response, Friends of the Earth’s Head of Climate Change Mike Childs said:
Following this criticism the Pop offsets website has changed its wording. As the Radical Statisticians note;
It is now offered with an emphasis that the decision to donate is one of “conscience not science”, but the unscientific calculations that balance consumption with unborn children remain part of the donation process and are indeed at the heart of the OPT perspective. [27]
Carbon offsetting is a neoliberal market based solution to climate change, which advocates the continuation of carbon intense, and polluting industry and lifestyles in the West, offset by projects which aim to prevent or reduce carbon emissions, usually in the global South.
A BBC Horizon special hosted by David Attenborough on 9 December 2009 further explored the idea of population control for carbon reduction.
David Attenborough
The eminent naturalist and documentary maker David Attenborough lent his name to the Population Matters in April 2009. In December 2009 Attenborough hosted a special BBC 2 Horizon programme ‘How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth’ which promoted the trust’s view that population is one of the biggest environmental issues. [28]
Affiliations
Population Matters is a partner in the Global Footprint Network. [29]
People
Staff
Patrons
Circa December 2009
December 2011
Board of Trustees
Circa December 2009
Circa December 2011
Advisory Council
Former members of advisory council
Others
Funding
Population Matters states that it is financed by its members, that it receives funding neither from the government nor from any political or business interests, and that it is not affiliated to any other organisation (except as a partner in the Global Footprint Network). [47]
Contact
Resources
Population Studies annual conference, York, 7-9 September 2010.
