News

One of UK’s most high profile environmental campaigners is to become the new President of Population Matters. Former Green Party leader and director of Friends of the Earth, Jonathon Porritt has been a vocal advocate for population issues and will champion Population Matters’ work in his new role.

The new State of the World Population 2018 report published by the United Nations Population Fund highlights the importance of having the power to choose the timing, number, and spacing of children in order to promote global economic and social development.

Disappointingly, the report does not call for action on population but acknowledges that high population growth is a “key impediment” to reaching climate targets.

Last Saturday, Population Matters joined ten thousand people from across the UK who flocked to London for a ground-breaking event: the biggest march for wildlife the country has ever seen.

A recent large-scale hedgehog survey across Britain’s rural areas found an alarmingly low number of animals, bolstering earlier research indicating a steep decline. An iconic animal in the UK, the decline in hedgehog numbers reflects disappearing biodiversity under human pressure.

The Chinese government may be steering away from its two-child policy amid concerns over the economic effects of a shrinking birth rate. These rumours were sparked by a social media post from China’s state-run Procuratorate Daily.

Today is Earth Overshoot Day – the symbolic day in the year when we have exceeded the Earth’s capacity to sustain us. 

Last November, 15,000 scientists urged governments to act to avoid what they bluntly called “widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss” identifying population growth as a “primary driver”.

The past few months have seen an unprecedented level of attention on population and family size in the media. With articles in The Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, and many other outlets, could it be that this long-neglected issue is finally getting the attention it deserves?